


Emergency Contact

by chezchuckles



Series: Army Castle [12]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Army Beckett is not good at accepting help though, Castle does not like Mike Royce, F/M, but also they are each other's person, drugged Beckett is hilarious, he's not too keen on her father sometimes either, they are just so bad for each other sometimes, this is one is long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:14:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29626173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chezchuckles/pseuds/chezchuckles
Summary: Castle is not Kate Beckett's emergency contact.
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Series: Army Castle [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945063
Comments: 48
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

When Castle got to the long row of rented lockers just outside Grand Central Terminal, he did a double check.

There were... vibrations. Rhythmic. A noise that permeated the metallic hall.

A phone.

Agent Castle proceeded cautiously, hyper aware of how naked he was, how exposed. He used the Schwartz Travel locker storage every time he came into New York, and that kind of routine was likely to get him killed.

He’d need to find a new place.

Until then, Castle had to collect his weapon and NYC cover ID, the usual bag. He stalked the hall of lockers until he got closer to his own, and he realized it was his locker vibrating with the phone’s incoming call.

Fucking hell - had he not turned it off? 

Castle hurried, jammed the key into the padlock, fumbled with the clasp. He yanked the storage locker open and shoved his hand down into the open backpack for his phone.

Cold. Silent.

It was turned off.

Castle went still, listening, aware, trying to comprehend. He heard nothing, no other sounds, and the vibrating that had attracted his attention - even convinced him he’d made a fatal error by leaving his phone connected - that vibrating was gone.

Something made him turn on his phone despite having his back to the hall - vulnerable. He snagged his backpack as the phone powered up, shrugged the straps onto his shoulders until the home screen came up.

He had five missed messages and - fucking hell - seven missed calls.

Castle opened up his mail folder, saw all five messages were from two unknown numbers, both with an New York area code. The phone calls were from those same numbers, plus two more.

Castle closed the door and locked his storage compartment, starting to hustle. He usually left his CIA cover ID inside the locker and came back for it, but he wanted everything on him right now. Just in case.

He got back streetside and pulled out his phone, started backtracing the calls.

A bar in Harlem.

Shit. Her father. Had Kate tried to call him? She knew he wasn’t in town until - well, actually, she hadn’t expected him for another two weeks. But he had moved up the timetable to extract their asset to London so that he could come home this week, celebrate with her.  
She’d made the jump to Homicide, which she had been craving nonstop since he’d met her, and even though it’d been a few weeks on the job and she was getting hassle for being the youngest ever, he was fucking proud and he wanted to celebrate.

He was here now at least. 

He called the bar, realized at the last second that it was four in the morning and it wouldn’t be open. Damn. He took the second call, started backtracing it, but it proved to be a blocked number. If he had the time to hook up the phone to a computer, he could figure it out, but not on the street like this.

Blocked call, the bar. Had she been trying to reach him? Or worse, fuck, had her father gotten so drunk he’d tried Castle instead of Beckett? Actually, that might be great. Meant Jim might have been not quite so shitfaced if he had the presence of mind to try and avoid Kate.

The third was a number that came up with half a name: Reilly.

Castle’s stomach dropped even as he pressed send. His hands were shaking; he knew that name. He thought. He thought he did. He couldn’t be sure, but-

Fuck, he could be sure. He never forgot a thing, let alone the name of her former boss in Vice at the 12th precinct.

Sergeant Reilly.

Her former superior officer had called him. His phone. Rick Castle, the Army soldier.

The phone rang twice and then was answered by a man who sounded like he’d chain-smoked for fifty years. “Reilly,” he harshed. “Go.”

Go? “I have a phone call from this number,” he said quickly, pressing the phone to his ear as he hurried down the block. Towards her apartment, like that would help, running to her. “Is this Sergeant Reilly? My - girlfriend - Detective Beckett - she was one of your-”

“This Rick?”

Rick. “Yes,” he croaked. “Rick. Army Specialist Rick Castle, sir.”

“Aw, fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? No.” He was running now, barely out of breath, but running. Like that would help. Like getting there would change anything.

“I regret to inform you-”

“No.”

“Detective Beckett was called back to Vice to assist in one of our operations. She was in an altercation with a suspect-”

“Oh, God.”

“She’s in surgery.”

Castle halted in the middle of the sidewalk, vision tunneling. “In surgery. She’s. In surgery. Where?” She’s not dead.

“Mt. Sinai Medical. Trauma Department.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll be there in twenty.”

He had a thousand questions, but it was more important that he get there. Altercation could be anything, but he didn’t even care. He needed only to get there.

\-----

Castle came into the Trauma Department at Mt Sinai, still clutching the phone in one hand and the backpack snug on his shoulders.

He’d sprinted the last few blocks. Sweat had run into his eyes.

Fifteen cops were in the waiting room, and as one, they turned to him.

One man in plainclothes separated himself out and Castle paused, hands curling into fists. Mike Royce made his way over, his eyes cautious and accusing at the same time.

“Where’s Sergeant Reilly?” Castle husked, ignoring him. He stepped forward, passing Royce entirely in the stuffed waiting room, seeking out the man with the uniform coat and the pips on his collar. “Sergeant?”

The older man looked like he’d sounded on the phone - grizzled, prominent adam’s apple, salt and pepper hair. He shifted towards Castle but didn’t move from his place in the center of the room, waited on Castle to come to him in a subtle and perhaps unconscious power play.

Castle, instinctively, slowed down. Stopped. Didn’t approach like the servant in this house of blue. He wondered if Captain Montgomery was here somewhere too. He seemed to have taken on the role of mentor, but Castle didn’t see him here.

“Sir. Detective Beckett.” It was question and command both. He was an Army Specialist; he was Special Forces Army Ranger. He commanded the room.

A few of the officers shifted, eyes cataloging him. He didn’t move. They were judging him, his worthiness of their comrade, and he was fine with that. He appreciated it, actually, because it meant that they respected Beckett and took care of her.

When he couldn’t.

Reilly assessed him too, but he at least opened his mouth and began to speak. “Beckett’s in surgery. She was shot, bullet broke her arm - they’re putting in pins or plates or some shit.”

“Which arm?”

“Left.”

“Good,” he said, nodding. “Blood donations?”

“Taking it right here. She’s-”

“O positive,” he said. “Yes, sir.” He glanced around at the rest of the men, then back to Reilly. “I’d like to know what happened. Sir.”

“Talk to Royce,” Sergeant Reilly said. “For the details. He was there.”

Castle shuttered his face, ignored it. Why the hell had Royce been there? He wasn’t a cop any longer. He’d ditched Beckett the moment she had been promoted. “Thank you, sir, for calling.” He narrowed his eyes at the sergeant, detecting something abnormal. Something about the shooting or the aftermath. He didn’t like it, and he fucking wasn’t asking Royce. “Has anyone called her father?”

The room reacted. It was slight, but it was there.

And that’s when he knew - at least part of it.

Castle let his own reaction show, closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them, the sergeant was giving him a knowing look. A shared look.

“Where is he?” Castle asked quietly.

“I got two of my guys baby-sitting him, unies fresh out of Academy. They’ll keep him off the street.”

“He’s her emergency contact,” Castle estimated. “And he was - at that place in Harlem. Damn it.”

“He was. That’s all I’ll say,” Reilly mentioned. Unsaid was to you, an outsider. Castle didn’t mind that either. Security around Beckett was ideal.

“That’s fine. He called me. And you got my number from him, I’m guessing. Beckett would never.”

“She would never,” the Sergeant agreed, letting out a growling breath. He sounded like a man in desperate need of a cigarette. “She said you were stationed overseas. She told me to stop calling.”

“I just got back. Wanted to surprise her, promoted to Homicide,” he said, narrowing his eyes to keep the husk out of his own voice. He had the tendency to adopt the speech patterns and mannerisms of those he worked.

But this wasn’t a job and the sergeant wasn’t being worked.

Beckett had been shot. And her father had been drunk when she had needed him.

Damn it.

\-----

When her eyes came open finally, when the wet-blanket weight slid off her body and she could breathe and blink and move-

A man was asleep beside her.

No.

A chair. A man in a chair.

She closed her eyes.

Her father hadn’t come. That was false. She’d been... dragged over. No.

Her eyes came open again.

The man was looking at her. Not her father, no, how could she ever think?

“Hey,” he murmured. 

He was very tall when he stood up like that; she couldn’t make her eyes track that tall. She had to rest; she had to close her aching eyes.

“Becks, baby?”

His voice had texture to it; a roughness that rubbed over her cheek. Like fingers. Fingers stroking back through her hair. An imprint on her forehead of a mouth. A kiss.

“Sleep it off, love. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

\-----

"How'd you manage this set-up?" Eastman said, back against the wall, arms crossed.

"I have very winning ways," Castle answered with a smirk. The interior hall outside ICU was depressingly white.

"You have winning ways, my ass," Eastman muttered. "I got real-time camera footage of the - altercation."

"And?"

"And I got no clue why he was there. But at least she brought back-up."

Mike Royce. Fucking hell. 

"You wanna maybe ask him?"

"No," Castle muttered. "I'll ask Beckett. When she's - not quite so drugged."

"She okay?"

Castle shrugged, unable to speak suddenly, throat tight.

"I sent the video footage to your email," Eastman said then. "The - not work email."

His cover ID; he'd built it slowly, over these past few years, hoping to keep it under his father's radar. He thought it was working. He'd had a lot of help - Eastman, Dr King - and thinking about the wall of blue out in the waiting room, the guys still there because Beckett was one of theirs, it made everything somehow worse.

She meant something. She meant something to those guys, and she meant something to him - so much that she'd made a way to give him guys - Eastman and King - two guys willing to have his back and help him in this because of her.

"Castle?"

He shook his head.

Eastman sighed and sank back against the wall with him, side by side now. His voice was low so as not to echo in this bleak white hall. "I know you, Castle. I know you're gonna do something. Just don't let it be something stupid."

"Is it stupid to want her so much?"

"No."

"Probably stupid to want her to want me too though."

"I don't think so. But I'm married." Eastman gave a shrug that Castle felt against his shoulder. "So of course I think you're just fine. But."

"But," he echoed. Eastman never pronounced judgment; it worked in their partnership. He always waited until Castle asked.

"But you gotta decide what you want. No more half-committed."

"Half?"

"Her drunk father is her emergency contact."

Fuck, that stung. "Who is Carrie's emergency contact?" he shot back.

"Me."

Castle stared at him, didn't even ask how that was possible because he knew it was possible. A burner phone with the calls forwarded from an exchange and sent out over a secure IP or satellite. He knew exactly how it was possible.

And he hadn't done it.

"I'm in," he said roughly.

"In this."

"With her," he clarified. "Whatever else has to happen."

"Your father-"

"Black has nothing to do with this."

"Which is why I think you adore her so much," Eastman sighed.

"It's not like a fucking rebellion. I don't love her because she has nothing to do with him. I love her."

"I didn't say you did," Eastman said easily. "I just said it made her damn attractive. I'm not holding it against you, Rick, and she wouldn't either. What I think you're missing out on here is that - this - is your life."

"The job."

"Stop identifying it as one or the other," Eastman sighed. "Not the job. Not her. Just this. This right here. This is your life. So if you're not meeting the needs, change an aspect of your life and see what happens."

"This is my life," he murmured.

"What you're living right now," Eastman replied. His voice held the weight of ten years on Castle and his own marriage. "You don't want her emergency contact to be her father? Then change things."

"He'd never..." let me.

What had he been doing these last three years but changing things? Doing it in spite of his father, doing it on the sly, being better for her as he learned what she needed.

"Now I know," he said. "At least, now I know she needs - an emergency contact who will move heaven and earth for her."

"That gonna be you?" Eastman asked, bumped his elbow into Castle's.

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "Yeah, that's me."

"Then make it happen, Agent Castle."

\-----

Her chest ached. Her arm was - a dead thing. That might be good.

Her eyes were closed, but she managed it this time. 

There was a man in the chair; he was smiling at his phone. She didn't know him.

She closed her eyes.

"Detective Beckett?"

Oh. The job. She'd been shot. She was supposed to be - not there. She was not supposed to be there. Have been there. She shouldn't have been there.

She was very confused. Must be good drugs.

She had to face it, sooner rather than later. Blame it on the good drugs if she couldn't get clear of this one. She opened her eyes.

He looked like a nice man. "Kate," he smiled. "How are you doing?"

"I know you?" she rasped. Her voice sounded wrong. 

"He said you did. I'm Mark."

"Mark." Her sergeant had sent in someone from IAB, apparently. It was going to be like that. 

"Mark Eastman. Nice to finally meet you face-to-face. You know he has me follow you sometimes, to be sure."

"Castle," she husked, her heart racing for no good reason. "You're - his Mark."

Eastman smiled and stood up, came to rest his hip against her hospital bed. Oh, fuck, she had been shot. She had been slow, the guy had-

"I'm a friend of Castle's, yes."

Castle. "He okay?"

"He had to make a meeting but he'll be back in an hour. He thought you'd still be asleep."

"He's here?" She didn't understand. Why was Eastman here if Castle was here?

"He's here. He came to celebrate. I hear congratulations are in order."

For one brief, terrifying, dizzying moment, she thought - oh God, pregnant.

And then her real life snapped back to her. "I made Homicide," she smiled.

"Congrats, Detective Beckett. And shot in her very first week on the job."

She groaned. "That sounds awful."

He laughed and laid his hand on the bedside railing. "Maybe you shouldn't groan for effect when Castle is here? It nearly had my pulse sky-rocketing. And I'm the calm one."

"He's not?" she smiled. It actually hurt. Smiling used muscles that must be nestled deep in pain receptors. She had to stop.

"When it comes to you, Detective, I don't think he is. At all."

Ow. Ow, it really hurt.

But she was smiling even as her eyes fell shut.

\-----

She was awake. Or had been for a little while, Eastman had said.

Castle had a new laptop and a new phone, but he kept them in his backpack, out of sight due to the high volume of traffic in ICU. For a closed ward, it was awfully busy.

He sank onto the mattress at her hip; she had turned in her sleep to lay on her side, her left arm splinted and trussed and plastered up against her ribs, immobile. He lifted a hand and traced a line of a vein that ran from the top of those bandages to the crook of her elbow.

Beckett shivered and came awake, just as if he had summoned her.

"Hey, there, Becks." He smiled because she was smiling, and he didn't know why. Either one. It was just beautiful for some reason, she was beautiful, having the chance to say her name again - her nickname that she hated. Beautiful to find her alive when six hours ago he hadn't even known.

"Mm," was her ultimate response. And the closing of her eyes, but he thought she was still there with him.

"You have two screws and a small plate in your arm," he murmured. She was the kind who liked to be informed, have all the facts, get it clear and straight. "Bullet went clean through. They found your back-up weapon on scene."

"Took you with me," she murmured.

"The weapon I gave you," he said softly. 

She hadn't yet opened her eyes again, but her voice was husky and low with drugs and sedation. Something about it reminded him of the way she put her mouth to his ear and laughed at his need.

"Beckett?"

Another hum, but not much else. She'd taken her back-up piece but not her service weapon; she'd taken Mike Royce, a former police officer. Whatever she'd done, it hadn't been on the books, no matter what her former Vice sergeant had said.

Or maybe Reilly had been the one to tip her off, and he felt guilty.

Because Castle knew what she'd been doing. Investigating her mother's case.

He stroked two fingers from the top of her soft cast to the dip of the hospital gown at her collarbone. Nudged her chin. "Kate?"

Her eyes came open for him.

"Hey, love."

Something like clarity began to firm in her gaze. With it came agitation, frustration, a feeling he couldn't name in that look. Her brow furrowed. "I feel heavy."

"Anesthesia is wearing off."

"Anes... what?"

"You were in surgery," he tried again. Every few times she'd woken groggy and not with it, this had been his litany. He knew how that felt, the confusion after violence. "You were shot, but it's just a broken arm. Six weeks, sweetheart."

"Oh." She blinked. "He shot me." Her face twisted, and it was like a string connected to his guts, yanking sharply. He leaned in close, elbows on the raised mattress beside her head, cradled her face in his fingers.

"It's okay, it's okay."

"Oh, God," she whispered. Her eyes were frantic, racing around the room. "They're gonna fire me. IAB was here. They-"

"IAB wasn't here, Kate. It's just been me. And Mark for a couple hours. He said he talked to you, sweetheart. Just us. Not even your sergeant has been allowed back yet."

"Mark," she repeated. She sounded bewildered.

"Eastman."

"Eastman?"

"My part-"

"Oh. Oh, him. I saw him. He said something sweet."

"He did?" Castle didn't even care; let him. He hoped it made her feel good, something sweet; he hoped it eased her mind, whatever Mark had said.

"Yeah," she murmured. Her lashes fell heavily, but they didn't close. 

He stroked his fingers over her cheekbones and under her eyes, leaned in to kiss each eyelid. "I'm so glad you're alive, Kate."

"Was I supposed to die?" she blurted out, eyes opening wide to him. Guileless and beautiful and yes, very drugged.

"You're never supposed to die," he whispered. "I forbid it."

"Such a bully," she mumbled. "No control over me." A little sigh that made her look like a girl. "That feels good."

He didn't stop stroking her face with his fingertips. "Anything for you."

"I should have realized," she sighed. "Knew it'd go bad."

"Why were you there, baby?"

Her eyes drooped. He felt her lashes skim his thumb. "My drug dealer."

He chuckled, couldn't help it, and her gaze came back to him. She looked completely gone, drifting far even as her eyes roamed his face.

"Kate?"

"You're here."

His heart twisted at the smallness of her voice. 

"I really love it when you're here," she smiled. Her fingers were suddenly skipping rocks up along his arm to his elbow. "You have a beautiful smile, Rick Castle."

"Oh yeah?"

"Makes me think things."

"Hm, what things?" He was smiling now. Of course he was. She was endearingly dopey. And rather honest, he hoped.

"There it is," she whispered. Her pupils were dark, and so wide. "Smile on me."

"Smile on you, huh?"

"Where it feels so good makes me love you back."

Castle froze, caught by the sly delicious heat in her words. Love him back? "Kate?"

"Mm, promise to be quiet if you put your mouth there," she mumbled. Her eyes were already closed. She would never remember this; she was so loopy already.

"I will. Later." He searched her face for anything, a sign, a clue, but she was being dragged unconscious. "Kate. I love you too."

\-----


	2. Chapter 2

Her mouth tasted funny. 

“Kate?”

She’d been shot. And her mother tasted funny. No. No, her mouth. Her mouth tasted funny. 

“Beckett, what’s wrong?”

Her mother was dead. 

“Hey, Becks, shh. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay, Kate. Do you need pain meds? They’ll come in and work with you on the dosage.”

She felt fingers dusting her cheeks, skipping over the leak of tears. She wanted to stand up, get out of here. She needed to get out of here. This wasn’t right. She felt bad.

“It’s okay. I called for the nurse. She’ll adjust the pain meds, sweetheart. We’ll get you set up.”

She opened her eyes and it was Castle, nose to nose with her, fingers at her temples and cheeks, intensity in his gaze. 

“Rick.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. What do you need?”

“Water.”

One hand disappeared, her eyes shifted but fell closed before she could see. After an indeterminate time, a touch of plastic to her bottom lip and her body’s instinctive sucking. The water hit her tongue cool and sharp and she came alert, awake again, stunned.

Castle hurriedly withdrew the water, snaked his arm under her neck and got her a little more upright.

She felt sick. 

“It’s the anesthesia, Kate. Promise. Been there, done that. It’s gonna make you feel sick and moody and disgusting for a few hours. Until your body gets real sleep.”

She opened her eyes. It was dark in the ward. Hospital. She’d been shot. She’d been shot. Her arm-

“Hey, now. Hey. Kinda kills me to see you cry, baby.” His lips pressed to her forehead, his breath across her hair.

When had he gotten here? “You’re - here.”

“I’m here. Okay, it’s okay.” Fingers in her hair, behind her ear, chasing a tear that had rolled back unwanted. “I promise, everything is okay. I’m gonna be right here. Sleep, Kate. Sleep so you can feel better.”

Yeah, that would be - she should just close her eyes. “Crawl - in with me?”

“I am, baby. I’m right here.”

Oh. He was? He was here.

“Feel me, sweetheart? Right here.” 

His fingers wrapped around her knee and squeezed and she realized then that he had curled up behind her, that he was everywhere, he was supporting her casted arm on top of his thick forearm.

“I’m here, love. I’m here.”

Her mother was dead. The drug dealer had gotten away.

\-----

A throat cleared in the darkness.

Castle lifted his head and saw Eastman at the curtain. “Shh,” he murmured. “She’s having trouble staying asleep.”

Eastman came in like a shadow and sat down in the empty chair that Castle had stolen from the nurse’s station. “She’s tough. She probably doesn’t need you in that bed with her.”

Castle gave him a baleful look over Kate’s narrow shoulder. “You telling me if it were Carrie-”

“All right,” Eastman said quietly. “And anyway. It’s done.”

“Yeah?”

“I did it myself. Easy to do.”

Castle nodded. “Good.”

“When you plan on telling her that you changed her emergency contact number?”

“I didn’t. You did.”

Eastman only raised an eyebrow.

“Doesn’t have to come up.”

Eyebrow was still high.

“When I find the courage,” he admitted. Castle laid his hand on her shoulder to keep from wrapping himself around her like a leech. “You find anything about that drug dealer?”

“I did, actually.” Eastman sat back in the chair and steepled his fingers, tapped them against his chin. “This has gotten quite interesting. I’d like to know how she got to him. What led her there. Because I don’t think even I would have seen it.”

“Who?”

“Vulcan Simmons. Runs a rather large drug operation out of Washington Heights.”

Castle frowned. Vulcan Simmons didn’t ring any bells. “That’s who shot Kate?”

“Yeah.”

He was going to murder the bastard. One day. Some day soon probably. He’d put a bullet into the man’s head.

“Not yet, Richard.”

“Not yet, but it will happen.”

“Give me some time to figure out what’s going on here. She’s in recovery for a good six weeks. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Castle just watched Eastman, looking for a tell, but he didn’t see it. He’d have to wait. Not long though.

“I’m on Simmons,” Eastman promised. “And now - for the rest of it.”

“Yeah?”

“Sergeant Reilly has taken retirement.” 

Castle let out a breath. So he’d been right - Reilly had been involved. There went the first obstacle. “And Royce?”

“He’s sitting out there. He thinks you’re in the army, but I’m working it into your background. Reilly is gone, Royce isn’t on the force.”

He would still extract his pound of flesh from Royce. “But the detective-”

“Yeah, I’m lining it up, Castle.”

“You’re not happy with me? You said be her emergency contact. To do that, I gotta be here.”

“You can be here. You can be in this city. Move into her apartment full-time. I don’t care. But moving into her house?”

Yeah. Yeah, it was going to take some fast talking. Really fucking fast. He’d... never get her to okay this.

“I won’t ask for permission,” he said finally. “Just for forgiveness.”

He was going to transfer into Homicide as a detective.

\-----

“I’m okay,” she told him.

“I know you are.” His fingers were rubbing lightly over the back of her hand where it came out of the cast. His body was wrapped around hers from behind. “I just don’t think I am.”

She didn’t answer that. This had become the longest night of her life. She couldn’t stay under. There was pain on the fringes of her awareness; it kept dragging her towards wakefulness. She was so fucking tired.

“Reilly called my phone,” he said.

“What?” she murmured. His words didn’t have meaning. She kept trying to catch them. It was as if, when he spoke, he was pouring the words out over her head and she was holding her arms up to the shower, but meaning ran down and collected at her feet, pools of it.

It felt nice, but she didn’t understand much.

“Your sergeant. I got to the locker yesterday and turned on my Kate-phone and I had all these missed calls.”

“Who calls you?” She didn’t call him. She never called him.

“No one calls me,” he whispered. His lips felt soft at her ear but his cheeks were rough. “No one ever calls me, Beckett, that’s the whole problem.”

“Okay.” She was playing her fingers in the water of his words.

“No one calls but I had all those missed calls and text messages that I didn’t dare open because you never know what data is attached.”

“Data gets attached all the time,” she murmured.

“Baby, no one calls me. But they did.”

“I’ll tell them to stop,” she sighed.

“No,” he nudged. His fingers stroked at the skin of her hand, around her knuckles, down to her fingers, encompassing her whole hand. Her body was tucked into his. Her cheek rested on his bicep below her head. She thought she might be drooling on him but she couldn’t seem to care.

“No,” she repeated, hoped it was right.

“They called because your dad-”

“Where’s my dad?” she cried, heart clutching on emptiness. “What happened to my dad?”

“Hey, it’s okay. Kate, sweetheart, I’m sorry. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s - you know him - he wasn’t - available when they called about you. You, Kate. About you getting shot.”

“Oh, I got shot.” She blinked, pieces tilting to the moonlight, a faded glimpse of real life. “I got shot. Fuck. I just started this job.”

“Yeah. Probably not a good move, Detective.”

She grinned, pressed her flash of teeth into his arm to keep the moon from stealing the light. “Yeah. I - made Homicide - I got in. I’m in.”

His fingers curled around hers and his mouth dusted her jaw. “I’m so proud of you, Kate.”

Her heart opened like a fist releasing. She wished her dad was here - not drunk. She wished he was never drunk again.

“I wanted us to celebrate. I was early. I’m so fucking glad I was early. I’ve been wrapping things up the last few months.”

“You’re early,” she hummed. The moon was peering in at the edges of her joy, trying to get a hand in to gobble it up. “These are really fucking wonky drugs, Castle.”

He chuckled and the moon shimmied, stole inside. She withdrew, jerking back, and met the contoured wall of his chest.

“Wonky drugs will be out of your system by tomorrow. Then it’s the low-key stuff. You’ll be grateful when you’re lucid enough to realize just how dopey you’ve been.”

“I’m dopey?”

“Sweetheart, oh, Kate. I could tell you anything and you’d never remember it.”

“Would too.”

“Wouldn’t.” His mouth settled at the nape of her neck, a hot breath out that washed down her back and made her arch. 

“You said... celebrate. See? I remember.”

“We’re celebrating just like this.” He kissed her spine, the ridge of bone, with reverence. “I’m celebrating right now.”

“I don’t feel it,” she frowned, trying to shift back into his groin. She didn’t-

“That’s not gonna happen,” he growled. “I will be good to you. For you. Not happening, Kate.”

She was pouting at the moon. It kept sucking down her light, stealing it, giving back this weak thing, a glimmer of how good it was supposed to be. “Want to happen. I want happening things.”

“Uh-huh, love. I know.” His lips electric again, his breath crackling her nerves. “This has to be enough for now.”

“No, you could... these are the good drugs. Could make it the really great drugs if we happened anyway.” She tried moving her not-dead arm, but she got tangled in his pillowing arm. All these arms.

“If we... no! Kate. Shit, stop grinding against me.”

Oh, good. She’d managed that at least-

“Kate, fucking hell, I love you, don’t make this harder on me.”

“Harder,” she giggled. ...Love?

“Oh, hell.”

She hummed and turned her face to meet that explosion of cursing, took a cue from the moon and sucked on his lips, drank down the light.

He groaned and his tongue was so clever, his body shifting and thickening, the feelings ephemeral as mist, cotton draping her, tripping the light fantastic, fantastic, fan-

“Oh, wow,” she whispered.

He pressed fingers under and up and just the right ways and she was soaring, launched from her own body and into the ether, riding a wave of euphoria straight into the dark beyond.

\-----

He slipped out of her bed. 

Really, he had to keep that from happening again.

She’d given him that little wonderful sound though. That noise she made when she couldn’t help herself. Like a kitten, something between growling and mewling, something startled and wondrous. 

And then she’d hummed as she fell right to sleep. Sleep was good. She’d stayed that way for the last hour, so maybe it wasn’t all that bad, what he’d done, weak for her.

Gone for nearly eight weeks this time. Two in Bengali for a thing, one in Africa at an installation in the Congo, helping to do some training, another two weeks doing prep work for this extraction. And then, finally, he had been hand-holding his asset for the last three weeks, convincing the man that extradition was really the only way out for him, and finally just doing it - extraction. He’d missed her, eight weeks of near-incommunicado, and he had really missed her.

Those three months of his suspension had been like gluttony, making himself fat on her presence, on being a presence for her day in and day out. She’d been ready to throttle him after two weeks of it, but they’d diverted the natural flow of their days around each other.

He hoped she’d missed him too. 

Well, probably not. Looked like she’d found a project for herself, thrown her whole being into it, chasing down this drug dealer connection to her mother’s murd-

Oh, fuck.

Castle put a hand up to his eyes, bowed over his knees. 

How had he not seen it before? Every time he left, she was involved in one scrape after another. His three-month suspension, she’d been relentless, of course, but not fucking insane in her recklessness. 

That night at the club when he’d surprised her by coming home early, and with the dog-

Oh, fuck. He had to get Eastman over to her place to feed the dog. 

He jerked to his feet and pulled out his phone, texted Eastman with an apology for the two a.m. wake-up call. Of course, Eastman texted him back in moments: I already took care of Cujo. He’s home with me.

Oh, right. Carrie had a dog. He’d forgotten.

thank you. hell, I’m a terrible dog-owner.

Yes. You are. You both are. Carrie is kidnapping him.

Castle grinned - let her try to take that dog from Beckett - and he pushed his phone back into his pocket. He was struck all over again by how he had people in his life suddenly. Eastman had been quietly having his back for years in the field, but now it was in his personal life.

Well. Because now Castle had a personal life. Never had before. And Kate was - just - everything. She just opened up these doors for him he hadn’t known weren’t there before, and everything was in a new light.

And meanwhile, he left her alone for eight weeks and she swan dived into her mother’s case, trying to break her neck on it.

Beckett didn’t know how to not.

He really fucking adored that about her. She didn’t know how to not. She just did. She had him because she wanted him and she took it and she took it and she was always-

It sounded like sex but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. It was life. She took it. Him, she just. 

He didn’t want to stop doing this. But it had to be stable. He’d thought, when he’d followed her on the subway and made his approach, he had only seen her resilience.

And she was. She was more than anyone else he’d ever known in his life. She could take it.

But why did he always make her have to.

She shouldn’t have to take it from him. He shouldn’t be breaking her heart, not hers. Not Kate. And it did break. Other women, they just tossed him off. They’d been as surface as he had been. But Kate just plunged into the depths, no matter; she had tried to be surface and he had let her believe it was, and it wasn’t.

It wasn’t.

This was different.  
And she deserved better.

An emergency contact was the very very least.

\-----

He was playing with her hair.

But when she woke, it was to see the nurse over her and feel the starch of her scrub top against her skin. 

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you."

Kate shifted and licked her lips, trying to find a voice.

"You thirsty?"

Had it... she had been dreaming, probably. She did that sometimes. Dreamed him. Embarrassing. "Water?" she husked. Her body felt strange. "What... I got shot."

"You did, but you're gonna be just fine." A pat on her shoulder, a cup with a straw. The icy wash down her throat made her choke, and the nurse tilted her forward, rubbing her back, clucking. She was large and grandmotherly and probably twenty years old.

"Tha-thanks," Beckett stumbled out. "My arm is - heavy."

"Well, that's real good, actually. Your anesthesia has worn off, so it's just pain management right now. How you feel otherwise?"

Kate licked her lips again and took another pull on the straw hovering close. She had to sink back and close her eyes, try to figure out just how she felt.

Lonely.

"I'm okay. Just - thick-headed," she rasped.

"That will fade today. But you had trauma surgery yesterday, so expect to be in and out of it. You're in the step-down unit until you get released - probably tomorrow."

Released. She'd have to - handle that. Home health would send a nurse out to check on her if that was necessary but Beckett was already determined that would not be necessary. "It was just my arm?" she asked.

"Broken arm - shattered arm. You will feel that one. I can tell you're the type who wants to do without the pain meds, but I'm telling you - not smart. Stay on top of the pain and it won't hold you back. You don't wanna be aching and miserable in eight weeks when you should be doing fine, do you?"

"No," she agreed. She didn't.

"All right, that's my sermon and I'm done. I'll tell your man he can come back inside now."

Her man.

And then there he was, sliding inside even as the nurse's own body filled the doorway. Castle managed to slip around her, eyes locked on her, and she felt herself responding, couldn't fucking help it, her smile beaming across her face.

He came to the side of the bed and laid his hand over her knee. "Hey. She made me leave."

"Someone had the nerve to tell you what to do?" she said, though the facade of shock in her voice was fainter than she liked.

Castle grinned, devilish. A rake. He was a rake. Like a good, old-fashioned playboy from the era of whist and coming out balls. She wanted him to seduce her away from the dance and have his way with her in the dark garden, her stays and his waistcoat and all that delicious, naughty arrogance.

"I know what that look is for," he grumbled. "Not happening. I already told you, Beckett. Not happening."

"No?" She uncurled her fingers carefully, testing it out. Hard to maneuver, harder to figure out how to make them work in concert. She lifted her right hand instead. "Still got one good hand, baby."

"And still in the hospital," he hissed, grabbing her good hand as she reached for him. "Don't get me wrong. I'm fucking desperate for you. Have been. But I'm more desperate for you to be conscious through the whole thing. Get me?"

She grinned. "Get you." He released her fingers and put her hand back in her lap. The head of the bed was mostly upright and she could just lie here and feel ragged and yet not really miss that much. "You here for - how long?"

"However long it takes," he shrugged. "I brought playing cards. I wanna teach you a game I learned in Bengali."

"Mm, what's it?" Whist?

"29. It's supposed to be played with four people in teams of two, but the guys I crewed with was every man for himself. It's a lot of fun. Here." Castle moved the little table over the bed and then dug out a pack of cards from his back pocket. They looked well-worn and faintly exotic. When he began to shuffle them, the odor of mothballs and spices came to her nose, drifting on the snap of the deck in his hands.

His hands were so wide and strong. She kept forgetting how massive they were, like bear paws, like a jungle cat. A panther. He was startling in his physicality. Such a nondescript man in so many ways, and yet so vividly aggressive in others. Sitting in a chair holding her hand in the hospital she had been sure was a dream. Coming around the corner and into her room as the nurse left was typical of his coming and going - a little unremarkable, mostly just average.

How easily others slid their eyes around him. And yet how quickly he could dominate and command. He was built like a former football player - but all that soft edged former was merely an appearance. Under those clothes, he was hard and brutal and she could break herself against him.

If he wanted her to. If he allowed it. It happened, every now and then, but mostly he was smiling at her and blue eyes sparkling so that the corners creased with joy. He was this man dealing her cards and nudging her knees aside so he could sit and telling dirty jokes and leaving the room when the nurse told him to...

Buying her potato cakes and coming to find her as she walked her beat, hand delivering them with that hopeful smile and all the guilelessness of a little boy. Presenting her with birthday strawberry short cake in the hotel's best dessert bar, licking whipped cream off his thumb and so surprised at how good it tasted. Rubbing the dog's ears and grinning to himself when he scratched Cujo's side and the dog's hind leg began to thump - then doing it over and over like it was some trick he was playing.

And then this, like right now: those deadly, capable hands moving in ways they shouldn't be able to move, handling the cards deftly, in control, skilled at a game he had picked up in a week. 

Killing every man left standing in a back room of an illegal gambling establishment and then escaping with her through Brighton Beach with the Russian mafia after them and out for blood.

Handcuffing her to the refrigerator and not meeting her eyes even once, doing exactly what he wanted and deaf to her begging.

And how all of that got to her. Turned her on, yes, oh hell yes, but more. This man had reached in and carved out her soul.

No one else ever could have. No one else ever would have, even if she had wanted it, offered it. Something about the taking that made it happen, something about the determination and confidence and focus that made Agent Rick Castle the only one.

The only one.

Fuck, she was definitely still drugged. She didn't usually let herself think about him.

"All right, now it's your go."

Oh, hell, she hadn't been paying attention.

"Becks?"

She blinked and glanced up from his now-still hands, finally found his eyes.

Blue and soft, a blanket stolen from a baby, rubbed against the cheek.

"All right, love. You're fading fast. It'll be here when you are."

She blinked and then couldn't blink again. Her eyes were closed, her hand inert on her lap, her consciousness closed over by nothing.

A brush of his lips to hers like the tug of a string but even that didn't bring her up again.

\-----


	3. Chapter 3

The knock on the door interrupted their card game, but Castle got up from the bed and took his hand with him, not letting her cheat.

She was mostly out of it today, though they'd had one or two stilted conversations. She looked uncomfortable but she wouldn't let him ask for pain medication. She kept saying she was fine and then falling to sleep. 

He opened the door to her narrow single-occupancy room and found Mike Royce on the other side.

"No."

"That's not for you to say," Royce gruffed.

"Door keeper," Castle shrugged, not moving.

"Castle." A call from her but he wasn't relenting. "Castle, I can see him. You asshole."

He made Royce step into him to get past and then he turned his head and saw her former training officer coming up to her on the bed. She had kept the table pulled up though, so at least there was an obstacle between them. 

Castle folded his cards and moved in, reclaimed his spot on her mattress against the angle of her pulled up knees. She gave him the evil eye.

He ignored it, began dismantling the house of cards - metaphorically speaking - even as he collected their game back into the deck.

"Castle, can you leave us?"

"I do too much leaving," he said.

Her mouth dropped open.

He didn't apologize. She was just enough drugged that she'd take that from him and not remember later just how offended she'd been. 

"Okay, man, look. I get it," Royce started, putting up both hands as if in a friendly gesture of surrender. "You hate my guts and I hate yours. But let me talk to Beckett about what went down. Get our fucking stories straight. You don't want this coming back on her."

He was supposed to be an Army Ranger, not a man with any kind of pull or resources in this city, but he was sorely tempted to break cover and prove to Royce his 'help' wasn't needed.

"Castle can be here for that," Beckett bit out. Sharp. Disappointed. "That doesn't require clearing the room. He knows."

"About your - mother?" Royce said, clearly surprised.

Why was Kate so disappointed that Royce wanted only to talk about that night? What had she been hoping for?

"He's the one who - who figured some of this out."

"I did?" The Army connection was still completely out of her hands - Castle had said absolutely nothing about that.

"You found the other murders, the connected homicides. When I went through her cases, I traced it back to a Take Back the Neighborhood Initiative."

"How'd you get to Vulcan Simmons from that?"

"His neighborhood they were taking," Royce muttered.

Despite himself, Castle was intrigued. "Okay. Time you explained. And Royce, when she's tired - you leave."

Royce seemed intent on ignoring him, but Beckett gave him a sidelong look that almost seemed grateful.

She was already tired.

\-----

Kate struggled to sit up straighter, but she realized her soft-casted arm was resting against Castle’s knees. At the simmer of disgust on Royce’s face, seeing that, Beckett left it there, right where it was.

Because, despite herself, she warred between hating Royce’s guts and yearning for him to be proud of her, at all, in any way.

She was the one doing the talking, and she realized she was playing absently with the edge of the sheet, her good hand taking up for the immobilization of the injured one. “When it came up that Simmons had been arrested for ordering the hit on another rival gang member, I thought he just looked too perfect.”

“Just like that? For a couple of similar crimes?’

“There’d been some death threats leveled against my mother’s group,” she pointed out. “And Simmons was getting some pressure from higher up to make his sales quotas.”

“In the drug trade,” Castle said, frowning. “And you think Simmons did it himself or hired someone?”

“Hired,” she said quickly. “It was contract work - you were - you were right about that.” He’d shown her the ME’s reports, the way he’d put them together, the different victims that had links to her mother’s own work. The ME reports had been so damaging, seeing the entire event that night in such a different lens: a hired killer making it look like a home invasion.

But, Castle had told her, the added personal element of such intense terrorizing. To stalk his victim down the hall of her own apartment, to have time taken with the killing, drawing it out, relishing it.

She shivered and Castle leaned his shoulder against hers; she hadn’t realized he was sitting so close. She couldn’t get the images of her mother’s crime scene photos out of her head. They blazed up bright and dark before her eyes.

“Vulcan Simmons wasn’t the crime boss then that he is today,” she said. “In fact, with those strategic deaths, the initiative floundered and broke up, the active cases against his organization were dropped, and Simmons took over an adjacent territory. He had some cops on his payroll too. He rose in prominence with his masters, and now look at him.”

“Cops. Like Reilly,” Castle growled. Royce flashed him a look and she hurried to deflect.

“Reilly told me where I could find him.” Royce still looked askance at Castle, but she didn’t think his jumping to that conclusion was entirely that suspicious.

“I imagine,” Castle said slowly, “that Vulcan Simmons would be a hard man to corner.”

“She had me do the surveillance,” Royce broke in, nodding towards her but speaking to Castle. He was always trying to prove himself to Castle, prove that he was good enough, she supposed, and she hated it and triumphed in it at the same time.

“Royce and I followed him round the clock for a week. I had night shift, Royce during the day. Just like you taught me.”

Castle grunted something and shook his head, and she knew it was because he didn’t approve of how she put his teaching into practice. But she didn’t give a fuck. This was her mother’s case.

“He taught you that thing about the cars?” Royce said.

“Yes.” She shifted her eyes to Castle. He looked knotted up. He wasn’t happy with her, hated Royce, and here he’d come back from nearly eight weeks gone to find she was completely out of commission. She was pissed at herself for that too, getting shot like a rookie.

She tried to lift her injured arm from his knees, but she found she couldn’t. At all. Not even a little. She was more exhausted than she’d realized. The pain meds were fucking with her head and her chest was heavy.

“And then what, Beckett?”

“Then...” she murmured. “Then we found the chink in his armor and I went after him.”

“I wouldn’t let her do it alone,” Royce said.

“You fucking followed me,” she hissed.

“Because I knew you were going to be tangling with a damn dragon, and you got burned, didn’t you?”

“Because he fucking took me hostage when you-” 

Kate closed her mouth, fury erupting cold and dark and terrible. She was going to hate him for the rest of her life, if not for the way he’d said no to her then for this. For ruining her only shot with Vulcan Simmons, alone in that damn tenement building, just her and him.

“He came in after you,” Castle prompted. “And then Simmons took you hostage? Why, Beckett, you let your guard down?”

“Because this asshole distracted me, coming up on my flank.” She was both furious and fucking drugged and it was making a noxious combination. She felt like she was going to throw up.

But she didn’t miss the way Castle moved beside her, and she reached over with her good hand, gripped a fistful of his shirt to keep him there. “No.”

“If he wants to fight me, then fight me. Come on. Fight me, soldier.”

She gripped tighter and tried to press him back, but she had absolutely no strength for it. Still, Castle didn’t move. Like she did have, at all, the power to hold him.

“So you came in on her flank, surprised her with Simmons-” Castle stopped, and she saw his head come to her, frowning. Royce’s face must have given it away. Shit. Castle narrowed his eyes at her. “What were you doing with Simmons, Kate, that he surprised you at all?”

She glared back. Fuck, she felt so terrible that it almost seemed like shame. “I - uh - might have pistol-whipped him.”

“Might have.”

“She was beating the shit out of him,” Royce said. A glitter of dark chuckle in his voice. She hated that too, because it made her heart lift.

“You were beating the shit out of him, Royce came in and distracted you, and Simmons got the upper hand. Took you hostage, and-” Castle grunted, swiped his hand down his face. “Fuck, I should have realized. You did the move.”

“Yes,” she growled. “But I was slow.”

“Fucking hell, Beckett. I just taught you that. We’ve only done it for a few months. You need repeated practice with Krav Maga skills to master them.”

“Well, the bullet went through my fucking arm and not my head, didn’t it? So I consider it a win.”

He pressed his head back into the mattress but she ignored him, turned to Royce. “There’s no story to get straight. You tell them exactly what happened.”

“Beckett, you can’t do that. You took a case on your own - a case you aren’t even assigned-”

“He’s a drug dealer. Reilly had intel for me. Vice handles drug cases. I can cover,” she said. But she didn’t know; her confidence was faked.

“And beating the shit out of him?” Royce gruffed. “Kate, you can’t-”

“Stop telling me what I can’t do.” 

“You’re a stubborn, pig-headed-”

“And you’re a fucking moron,” Castle growled. “It’s time to go.”

Kate grunted and elbowed him, but he was shifting away from her. Royce had backed up, but he looked like he was spoiling for a fight, ready to stand his ground.

“Out,” Castle snapped. “No more. She’s done.”

“Castle-”

He was already shoving Royce towards the door, gone from her side just like that, and Kate slumped into the empty space, her support taken away. 

“Castle. Stop. It was-”

“I don’t care what it was. We’re done. That’s it. Royce, you get the fuck out of here. You’ve done quite enough already.”

“Rick,” she tried. Her voice shook. She was on her bad arm, unable to get upright again, her cheek mashed to the pillow. Her elbow ached. Her shoulder was on fire. “Rick...”

The door slammed. She jerked her eyes open, unsure when they had closed.

Castle was still riled up, his broad shoulders like a wall against the shadow of the shut door. She watched him clenching his fists, trying to keep a handle on his anger.

“Rick,” she tried again. Her voice cracked and Castle turned sharply back to her.

“Shit. I’m so sorry.” He was at her side in seconds and his arm under her armpit, the other hand cupping the back of her neck, sliding her upright. “Beckett, fucking hell. I’m no better for you than he is.”

There was a catch in his voice that made her feel flushed. She tilted her head back and unfurled her fingers from the edge of the cast. “You’re better,” she sighed. “So much better.”

She hadn’t meant to say it, but it was so plainly true. She was too tired to take it back either.

“I am?”

Her eyes flickered up to his; he looked surprised. “Castle,” she muttered. Her mouth was running away from her. “When I sucked you off on my couch, at least you stayed.”

“Oh, fucking - fuck. Fuck. You really - now I’m pissed off and horny at the same time,” he scraped out.

She laughed, lips curling up as he shook his head. Her free hand came up and caught his shirt. “Get in here. Easier to sleep against you.”

“Yeah? At least I can do that right.”

“You play the part of a pillow very well,” she murmured.

He was shifting her carefully and getting back into the bed with her. It wasn’t big enough, not really, but usually she turned into him and her leg came between his, and he’d keep so still, and quiet, and he was never still and quiet.

“I don’t know how any man could say no to you. Or woman for that matter,” he husked. She was already nose-deep into the crease where his arm met his shoulder. His fingers were gentle and easy at her injured arm, positioning the soft cast against his chest.

“You say no to me,” she mumbled.

“I never say no. Well, okay, I said no today but that’s because you’re heavily sedated. I need you writhing under me.”

“What about over you?”

He chuckled; she heard it under her ear. It was warm now, and he was arranging the covers up over her shoulders. “You can be over me any time - day or night - Beckett. I love it any way you want to give it.”

“Any way at all?” Her voice was drifting. “Sure about that?”

“Remember that first night we had?” His mouth touched her cheek. “You didn’t even touch me, Kate. You just spoke into my ear and fingered yourself until I came.”

She was too drugged to get worked up, but it was a burning, arousing memory that made her squeeze her knee against his inside thigh. Castle draped an arm around her waist and fingered the edge of the hospital gown underneath the blanket.

“Any way at all,” he murmured.

“I could do that for you now,” she rasped. Her eyes were closed, but talking? She could talk to him.

“How could you possibly?”

“Doesn’t it work like this?” she husked, nudging her cheek against his pectoral muscle. He flexed, almost involuntarily, and she touched her tongue to the material of his shirt until it was soaked through.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“I could do it. Just don’t jostle me too hard,” she warned.

He went very still. “No. No, I won’t-”

“Nothing you can do about me talking to you. How you feel, how heavy your cock is against my thigh when you’re on top of me. You know that tease you do, baby? Where - where you slide - slide against my cunt.”

“Fuck. Kate, you really shouldn’t have to-”

“Want to.”

“You sound breathless.”

“Just thinking about it makes me want to do it. You know how I am. Even drugged up, still want things I shouldn’t want.”

“Tell me-”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me how it feels,” he husked. She opened her eyes at the soft touch of his fingers along the bare skin of her hip. “Tell me how you feel.”

“I feel...”

“Tell me what you think about when I’m inside you.”

“I don’t think,” she husked. “I feel.”

“Yeah?”

His hand at her hip - oh, oh, but his other hand. He was moving, the blanket was hiding his work, but she saw, she thought she saw, the way he was taking himself out.

“Feel invaded,” she said. Her whole body tingled, awareness pricking through the heaviness like stars in the sky. “Feel impaled, pole-axed, fucked.”

“Not that,” he whispered. His lips caressed her cheek. “When you make that noise like a cat. When you gasp my name and grip my ears. Why is that different? What makes it different then, Kate?”

“Feels - overwhelming,” she choked. She knew when and what he meant. Going down on her, his mouth there. And some of the time when he fucked her so hard that her teeth rattled, he would suddenly go agonizingly slow and it would be- “Too much.”

“Am I too much?”

“Too good,” she amended. “Too good for me. I can’t stand all of it, all of that - that feeling crashing through me. Your mouth, around your cock, sometimes just your tongue on my breast and suddenly you’ve peeled me open and spilled my insides out on the floor.”

“Oh, fuck me,” he groaned.

She slid her eyes open but she couldn’t see much. She could imagine the girth of him, how dark and straining, the way he throttled his cock. It was erotic, his violence with himself.

“I think I can’t take it, I can’t possibly hold all that - all that feeling I have - how it crowds everything out so that you’re - you’re all the world to me.”

He shouted as he came, a jerk of his hips that he couldn’t control, her body jostled but she didn’t even feel it. Under the blanket, she could feel the hot seed of him staining her leg where she was pressed to his inside thigh. He was shaking now, and the arm around her waist tightened, his mouth crashed down and into her eye like he’d take anything she offered.

“Good for you?” she husked. She was tingling and aware now, though her eyes were so heavy, her chest felt caved in with the pressure of pain meds.

“You’re amazing,” he croaked. “I - don’t know how I got so lucky. Fuck, Kate, I gotta clean this up.”

She smiled, wished she had a chance here. But she was overheated and heavy now, her left breast numb with unfeeling but her right one peaked and aching. Miserable enough to want him but not hazy enough to feel no pain.

“You okay, sweetheart? I think, yeah, hell, I got your leg. The sheets are gross. Fuck. I’m gonna go-”

“No, no,” she mumbled. “Don’t need to do a thing. Leave it. Like the feeling.”

Oh, maybe that was too weird. She was usually better about her filter. Most times. She wasn’t sure she’d ever told him she liked his come on her thighs. That probably was too much.

“I like it too,” he whispered.

Her eyes flared open. He was staring down at her like she was something - precious, unlooked-for, like a hidden treasure.

“Means you’re mine,” he husked.

She was.

\-----

When she’d fallen asleep, a heavy thing, Castle did what was right and got out of her bed. His jeans were loose at his hips and still unbuttoned, his hand sticky, his shirt stained. He couldn’t even really feel much guilt over it because there had been something so raw and open about Kate when she’d talked him into it that it made him think he could actually do this with her.

He could do this, and this had really been the only way available to him to do it at all. There hadn’t been a chance to be more for her, what she deserved, because Beckett wanted to punish herself, to make it hurt. Only then did she feel that a thing could be good or right. If it hurt.

He’d hurt her all right. And she gravitated to him like a leaf to light. 

Now that he was - now that it was different between them, now that he thought, maybe actually could even trust that he had a place in her life, he could do right by her. He could make it right.

He was going to be here. That was the important part.

Castle cleaned himself up in the bathroom and then brought a water-soaked washcloth back to the bed where she was still asleep. He’d made sure to get the water as hot as it would go, so that when he gently washed his semen from her legs, she barely even stirred.

She was so gorgeous. He wasn’t sure when that had happened. Not that she hadn’t knocked him flat when he’d first seen her, but this was something else. A quality to her that maybe only had come from knowing her: the strength and the mettle, the vein of steel in her will, the vulnerable need, the full tilt way she went at a problem.

She was gorgeous. She made him ache all the time. Not just his cock, but his heart. His heart just ached for her. He thought about her in the dark when he was alone and her smile came to him when a phrase struck him funny on a mission. He found himself recapping his mission as he lived it, in the way he might tell her some day. He carried her around with him, and he’d mistakenly thought - for some reason - that she would feel that. And know.

But of course she didn’t. She hadn’t thought him any more dedicated to her than he had let her see. He’d been forced to do it that way, forced by the quirks of her personality to launch guerilla warfare, ambush her heart.

He thought he’d done it. It wasn’t going to be easy, by no means, but the drug-induced wall-collapsing had given him hope at least. Hope for what came next. 

She could kick him out at any time, but like hell he’d stay out.

Castle eased the hospital gown back over her thighs. The sheet was gross, and he just took it straight down the bed, leaving her only the blanket. The fitted sheet might be salvaged, once it - dried a little. He would go find a clean set though. And some clothes for her; she kept saying she was freezing without him to heat her up.

He dropped the sheet in the bathroom, the washcloth over it. He washed his hands in the sink, checked his shirt to be sure. He thought maybe the stains look pretty fucking obvious but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Castle checked her once more in the bed, pressed a kiss to her forehead as he brushed the hair back from her face. “Love you, Kate.”

He’d have to stop saying it once she was back on her feet, unmedicated. He was going to cram it in to every single moment he could until then though, hope it trickled down into her subconscious. He’d speak it over her when she was asleep, infuse her dreams with the reality of things.

He loved her; she loved him too, even though she was still probably on the side of not wanting to love him. He knew it was self-defense and the shitty things done to her in the past, how everyone had abandoned her. 

Like fucking Mike Royce.

Castle pushed out of her hospital room and began heading down the hall to the nurses’ station, searching for clean sheets, an extra blanket, maybe a couple of scrub tops. He might have to go down to the gift shop and buy a few hospital-logo-emblazoned articles there.

“Mr Rick, where you going?”

He turned and saw her nurse, the one who kinda scared him; she was massive and young and pretty, and she looked at him like she knew him, knew every single on his failures and was letting him stay only because she wished it.

“Uh, yes, ma’am, I’m looking for some extra blankets and stuff for Kate. She’s freezing.”

“I can find you that.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.” He was used to reconnoitering on his own. “What about clothes? Extra scrubs I can steal from the doctors’ lounge maybe?”

“Sorry, honey. Gonna have to go down to the gift shop and buy something.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Can do. Will do. Thanks.”

She patted his arm and then hummed, squeezing his bicep. “Well, now.”

He managed to get away and headed for the main hall and the elevators that would take him down to the welcome lobby - and that gift shop. He had a wad of cash in his pocket from Eastman; he didn’t want his New York cover to be tagged to this hospital when the shooting of an officer was a big deal to the local media.

Before he even made it to the elevators, he saw Mike Royce.

Flirting with a pretty, dark-haired nurse, smiling like he hadn’t gotten his former partner shot.

Castle didn’t lose it; he decided, right there and then, that this was his moment.

His tackle slammed the man back against the wall of the waiting room and rattled his teeth. But Royce’s arms came up defensively and he got in a weak punch; Castle hauled a haymaking fist into his jaw and Royce groaned. The nurse had barked a protest, but Castle landed his knuckles into Royce’s guts, wanting him to feel it, feel it as deep as Castle had felt it when her fucking sergeant had answered the phone.

I regret to inform you.

Castle tattooed that fucking regret on Royce’s ribs, one after another, until something pushed between him and his punching bag. He was hauled off Royce by two men - security guard and a male nurse - violently shoved away.

But Castle was under control. He held up both hands to show he was done, kept away. The male nurse was getting Royce up off the floor where he’d collapsed, but Royce, to his credit, was shaking his head and standing on his own, disowning the help.

“You should press charges,” Castle heard the security guard saying.

Royce met his eyes, shook his head again. “No,” he scraped out. The female nurse made a motion as if she was going to insist, but Royce pushed away from the wall.

Castle moved to follow and the two got in his face again, the guard and the male nurse. “Royce,” he called. “I’ll walk you down.”

“No, sir, we-”

“All right.”

The guard looked bewildered, but the male nurse must have understood the tension threading through the hall. He stepped back and grabbed the guard’s arm. “Let him. If they want to fucking beat each other senseless off our property, then let them.”

Castle was too calm - and too trained - for that. “He’s not worth the arrest,” Castle said, a brief smile as he stepped away from them. He caught Royce under the elbow and marched him towards the elevator.

“Is that it?” Royce said through the pain. His face was clean because Castle had calculated his attack and gone for the midsection. Purposefully. “Are we done now, Castle?”

“You done with Beckett?”

The silence was telling. Castle wasn’t pleased. He jabbed his thumb into the call button.

“You should leave New York,” Castle said finally. “Whatever the fuck you’re doing here, you can do there.”

“There?”

“California would be too close. But I guess it would do.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You can think of it like that, or you can see it for the truth. You’re bad for her; you’ve fucked her up in ways that are so damaging she can’t act right.”

“Fuck you,” Royce muttered. “What do you know about-”

“I didn’t say no.”

Royce turned like he was going to go after Castle, but Castle shoved him into the now open elevator. He lifted an eyebrow and got on as well, hit the button for the ground floor.

“You stick around New York,” he said easily, “and I’ll be coming back for you.”

“You can’t fucking-”

“I can. Because I’m the one who loves her - and knows what to fucking do about it. But you? You fucked yourself. And there isn’t any way for you to make that right except by fading quietly into the night.”

Royce swallowed. Castle could tell the pain was getting to him.

“You go along with her,” Castle said. “You follow her into hell and you don’t do a damn thing to help her. I follow her into hell and we do our damn business and come back up again. You understand me?”

“Who do you think you are? Hercules?”

“If that’s what you gotta think, fine. What I’m saying is, Royce, you’re bad for her. You don’t do her any good.”  
“And you do?”

“I’m getting there.”

Royce was leaning heavily against the back of the elevator, but when the doors opened, he was the first one off. He turned then and trapped Castle in the elevator, giving him a dark, tumultuous look.

“I’d already been planning on LA, start over. I - I won’t say I’m proud of what I’ve done to her, but I’m proud of her. The cop she’s become. But the moment you abandon her, the second you screw her over, I will hunt you down. I will end your life.”

Royce didn’t wait for Castle to deny it, he just walked away. He kept on going, through the lobby, ignoring everyone. He didn’t look back at Castle, he just didn’t look back at all. 

Didn’t matter. Let him. 

Castle was never going to abandon her. She was his.

\-----


	4. Chapter 4

Beckett shifted forward, easing into the nurse’s steady grip. Her legs felt shaky, but it was only a short step to the wheelchair. New nurse, must be morning. Hard to tell without windows.

She wasn’t sure where Castle had gone. When she’d woken, she’d been in yoga pants and a t-shirt, there were three blankets draped over her, and her arm had ached.

“All right, Kate, keep your elbows in, and we’re on our way.”

She pulled her elbows into her ribs and off the armrests, wincing as the movement pinged the bones in her left arm. It hurt. She wasn’t gonna lie. The numb as meat feeling had disappeared completely; it had been the pain that had woken her.

“How long will this take?” she asked. Her voice was still drugged-heavy and croaking. She wished there was a headrest on the wheelchair.

“Not long. Couple x-rays. I think they wanted to look at your head too.”

“My... head?” she got out. Her throat was raw. Her sleep had been all too short, and then she had lain in the half-light until the nurse had come in and turned on the lamp over the bed.

“Cracks in the skull.”

Cracks in the skull? Honestly a lot of the event was a blur. Royce had come in to get their stories straight, but whatever he’d told IAB and her Captain must have been enough. She hadn’t received a visit from Montgomery.

She had confronted Vulcan Simmons and he had - there had been a moment where he had her face smashed up against the plaster wall and she had thought, oh fuck, just like her. But then she’d flipped out of his hold, spraining his elbow in the process, and he’d dropped to his knees like a sack of stones.

She had been - angry. Something terrible and dark, her mother’s death before her eyes, had risen up and taken hold of her. She had smashed her weapon into the side of his face and then gripped the back of his head, brought her knee up.

Royce had come in right at that moment, her knee had angled wrongly as she’d reacted to the new presence, and Simmons had plowed right into her from his position on his knees.

The back of her head had thumped hard against the wall, dazed her long enough for Simmons to put the gun to her chin. Her own weapon. That beautiful, fucking expensive gun that Castle had given her, pressed it into her hands, had been used by Simmons to hold her hostage.

So she’d done the armed-intruder self-defense move from Krav Maga, slamming her forearm up into the barrel of the gun, intending to twist and grab the weapon to keep control of it.

When she’d told Castle that, he had looked so damn proud. She’d seen it well up in his eyes, that vicious satisfaction that flared in him when they’d accomplished something together.

Together.

But it hadn’t gone down quite like she’d practiced with Castle. Gun had fired, close range, right into her forearm, the bullet had lodged an inch away from her face into the wall. 

The hallway was making her dizzy, the forward rush towards X-ray. 

She hadn’t told Castle that the crime scene guys were going to be digging that slug out of the wall near her head. He’d fucking lose it. He was already hard to handle; the drugs had fortunately kept her pretty down, out of it, so that she didn’t have to think about it.

“Here we go, Kate.” The nurse was pushing her into a dimly-lit room, the door open. 

She saw a plain, hard table - low to the ground - and the nurse wheeled her up to it. Overhead was a panel that looked somewhat like a florescent light, but it was framed in heavy plastic.

“All right, up on the bed.”

Bed? Not hardly. But she put her feet to the floor and leaned forward, let the nurse haul her upright. 

“I’m gonna fall,” she rasped.

“Fall towards the bed,” the nurse said, something like a chuckle in her voice. Wasn’t funny. She couldn’t keep her knees locked; she was doing a controlled slump to the plastic table, jostling her hard. 

“Fuck,” she whispered.

“How’s the pain?”

“It fucking hurts,” she snarled.

“Beckett. Play nice with the others.”

Her heart flipped at his voice. She lifted her head and he was filling the doorway, broad and strong. She swallowed down the frustration as he came for her.

“I got it,” he told the nurse quietly. “Legs up, Becks.” He tucked his arm under her knees and put a hand at the back of her neck and deftly swiveled her onto the table. Bed. Whatever.

“Let’s put the apron on you,” the nurse said, dragging a heavy-looking blanket over to her. “Are you pregnant? Any possibility of it?”

“No, no,” she muttered, closing her eyes.

Castle was laughing; she made a movement to smack him but it was her injured arm. “Don’t stand at my left,” she growled at him. “You made me hurt myself trying to hit you.”

He chuckled at that too and she cracked open an eye to see that he was trying to take the apron from the nurse. The nurse shook her head and draped it over Kate herself, arranging the flaps over her shoulders and velcroing it behind Kate’s back.

“Lie down, please,” the nurse said. Her voice was clipped. She evidently didn’t find Castle very funny. Or maybe Beckett had offended her. She didn’t give a fuck; she hurt. Her arm was killing her. “Lie down, Kate.”

She grunted as she went, and the nurse arranged her arm in an awkward angle off to her side. The apron went down to her knees, heavy and strange, and the pressure on her chest seemed unbearable.

“Stay just like that, please. And you - with me. You can’t be in here when the x-rays take.”

“All right,” Castle sighed. She opened her eyes and saw him leaning above her, and then she had a fast kiss against her forehead, a squeeze of his fingers at her earlobe, tugging. “Be still, Beckett. Don’t want to have to do it over again.”

It was freezing in here; she definitely wanted to get this over with.

When they were done, she might have to ask for pain meds. This was hell.

\-----

“Well, you’re not pregnant now, are you? Fried to a crisp-”

“Dead baby jokes are not funny,” she hissed at him. Castle grinned back, cupped the side of her face. She looked really bad.

“Sorry,” he whispered, leaned in to kiss her pursed mouth. “But what would you do with a baby, Kate Beckett?”

“Probably kill it,” she sighed. Her lashes fluttered. “Almost killed your dog.”

“Did you?” He was waiting on the doctor to read the x-rays. Apparently the night nurse had suggested she might have a concussion, though Castle wasn’t sure how that woman could possibly have seen it. He was paying attention and even he couldn’t distinguish drug-induced from concussion-induced. “Cujo’s with Mark and his wife.”

“Mark has a wife?” she blurted out, eyes flaring open.

“Yeah, love. Name’s Carrie.”

“Carrie?” she exclaimed. She sounded so surprised.

“Shhh, state secrets, sweetheart. Keep it to yourself.”

Kate shifted in the bed. “I need - Castle - why won’t they give me something?”

“Might have a concussion. Plus, they’re trying to wean you off the drip to go home.”

“Oh, I really wanna go home,” she sighed. Her eyes closed, but her mouth kept moving. “Guess why I’m so tired. Concussion.”

“That’s what they’re trying to figure out. Sometimes the rebound from the pain meds will make you tired like this.”

“Where’d you go?”

“When, baby?”

“Woke up you weren’t here.”

“Oh, love, I didn’t think you’d wake.” He dusted his kiss to her cheek and her eyes didn’t open at all this time. “I’m sorry. I should have been here.”

“Weren’t here.”

“No, but I was - with your dad.”

“My dad.” Her eyes opened then, struggling to orient to him. She tried pushing off her good elbow to sit up, and Castle reached out to help, sitting at her hip to keep her from moving too much. 

“He’s okay,” Castle promised. “He just had a rough few nights. I think he-”

Castle shut it down, shaking his head. He shouldn’t offer that kind of thing, not when he didn’t have much faith in it working out. Her father had mentioned rehab again, a kind of cry for help, he thought, but last time it had been so bad when he’d relapsed mere days later.

Not going to add that to Beckett’s plate.

“He sober?” she husked.

“He is now. He wanted to come visit you, but I told him you’re supposed to be discharged tomorrow.”  
“Don’t lie,” she rasped.

“What lie-”

“Don’t.”

Okay, so her father hadn’t said that. Her father had been too ashamed to agree to a visit. “Fuck, Kate,” he sighed. 

She closed her eyes again and leaned her head back against the raised mattress. She looked washed out. It was the pain, and he knew it, but it made him feel shitty to see her struggle with it. She lifted the fingers of her good hand and caught the hem of his hospital t-shirt, made a fist of the material like she needed to hold on.

“Soon as they look at your x-rays, they’ll know if you’ve cracked your skull, Beckett.”

“Thanks. You’re so encouraging, asshole.”

She was upset about her dad; she wasn’t upset with him. He could take the cursing and the snark, easy as pie. It was the pathetic whimper at the end of her words that made his heart twist.

He reached out and stroked across her cheek, pretended it was a loose strand of hair. It wasn’t. He just wanted to touch her.

“Why x-rays?” she whined. “Why not an MRI? If it’s my brain. I don’t-”

“Hey, shh, Kate. It’s okay. The x-rays - CT scan, babe. That’s what it was. Cross-sectional images of your skull and brain. That’s why it took so long. All those pictures.”

“Oh.”

He touched his fingertips to her cheekbone. She didn’t open her eyes. He sighed and traced her orbital socket up to her eyebrow. “They’ll do an MRI if they need to, but a CT scan is a little cheaper. You have kinda crappy insurance, Beckett, for being a city employee.”

“They just changed it. Everyone hates it. They’re gonna change it again when the year is up.”

He smiled. She sounded so pissed, even exhausted - indignant for herself and her fellow police officers. He leaned in and kissed the side of her nose, that spot that sloped to her cheek. He could feel the flutter of her lashes as she reacted to him.

“Never said...” she murmured.

“Never said what?”

“Why you’re even still here.”

Oh, the forlorn ache in her voice made his guts twist. He hadn’t meant to be away from her so long this time. Eight weeks non-stop. He usually was able to come back for a day or so in between, but he had owed his father. “Still here because I’m between jobs, at the moment. Won’t take a new mission right now.”

“Oh, no,” she said, all snark. “Don’t let me stop you-” 

“Kate. Don’t be a bitch just because you got shot.”

She grunted and opened an eye, saw him grinning at her. Only way to do it with her sometimes, in her face like that, a good slap.

She liked to hurt for it.

“You’re a bastard,” she muttered.

He skimmed his fingers down over her eyes and she reflexively closed them. They stayed closed, and he leaned in, kissed that sour, pursed mouth.

She tasted sweet. She tasted like the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“Sleep, Kate. I’ll be here when you wake.”

“Promise?”

God, she killed him, she absolutely killed him. “I promise. Even if I have to wake you myself to let you know.”

She grunted, something like a laugh maybe, something content. Her fingers went slack in his shirt and fell away.

She was asleep.

\----- 

She didn’t like this. Pain. A lot of pain.

“The bones of your forearm were shattered,” the surgeon told her calmly. “It’s something of a miracle we were able to put together what we did. Close range like that.”

“Right,” she gritted out.

Castle was with her; she’d waved off the surgeon’s privacy concerns. Not like Castle couldn’t find out, with his contacts, and he’d badger the shit out of her if she didn’t let him stay anyway.

“When does she get out of this place?” he asked. She was interested in that one.

“We’d like to see you stay another 24 hours. The concussion has just cropped up - which is normal, with this kind of injury - but we want to keep you under observation.”

“Which means waking her all night long,” Castle muttered.

“Not that bad, Kate. I’ll tell them to go easy on you.” The surgeon was making eyes at her - winking, something. Was she that concussed that she thought the guy was flirting with her?

Castle crowded up against the bed. “I can do the waking. And the neurological test, if that’s the-”

“No, no. Has to be the nurse.” The surgeon had stepped back.

Huh, not just the concussion talking. Cute surgeon, really. Not bad looking. But entirely unappealing. She was a little depressed she had absolute zero interest in such a cute, eligible-

Wait, did he have a ring?

Castle’s fingers came around hers, squeezing, claiming. 

No ring. Just zero, zero interest on her part.

She squeezed back.

“I’ll just make a note on your chart,” the surgeon was saying. “I’ll confer with the pharmacist, but we’ll start you back on pain meds - just won’t be quite as good. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, fine,” she muttered. She felt like she was clinging to Castle’s hand, desperate in a way she hadn’t felt before. Desperate to not feel like this. Any of this.

The surgeon gave her another bright, beaming smile but she couldn’t help seeing Castle in her periphery, how terribly anxious he looked over her, and it wasn’t just because she had a concussion and was in pain. 

Well, some of it, but he’d seen her in some pretty stupid and humiliating and painful places lately. He saw a lot of her she wasn’t happy about, but what the fuck could she do? He was-

“I’ll leave you to get some rest. You take care of her.”

Beckett startled, her eyes darting to the surgeon again even as he left the room.

Fuck, she’d been making moon eyes at Castle. Well, hell, he was doing the same back. She was just - too tired and hurting to care. Just too tired. She could figure it out later, right? She just couldn’t do it right now.

“I’ll take good care of her,” Castle murmured, but the doctor wasn’t even here. He looked at her like - everything - and she’d been fooled by that look before, she’d taken it to heart, stupid stupid girl that she was, and she couldn’t let it mean things.

“I’m - tired. Let me sleep,” she husked, though she’d been trying for surly. Hadn’t worked out that way. She’d only managed to make him think her endearing. He was smiling at her, soft and tender, and his fingers were stroking the hair back from her face, and it felt really good to have him here. Dangerously good.

“Sleep. Someone will be in to wake you all too soon, anyway.”

“You’re not staying?” Fuck, she hated herself. She hated herself for that.

“Oh, I’m staying, Beckett. Couldn’t pry me out of here. I’d do it if they’d let me, but they won’t. Probably liability or something.”

“What?” He was so confusing. She didn’t understand him. He looked at her like she was hopes and dreams incarnate, scarily so, and then he disappeared for eight weeks without much more than a random email or a photo texted to her phone of some strange African jungle.

“The nurse has to wake you and record your vital stats, baby. Not me.”

“Oh.” Oh, the nurse was waking her. Later. In a few hours. “But my pain meds?”

“Yeah, they’ll be giving you some. Nurse is gonna come in. No IV though. Besides, Kate, do you think it’s such a good idea...”

“What?” She had her eyes closed and she wasn’t really thinking; her brain was mostly jogging from one emotion to the next. But he was nervously silent and she opened her eyes, blinked at him. “What’s a good idea?”

“Nothing,” he murmured, soft shake of his head. “I’m here. I’ll look out for you. Won’t let it get bad.”

“Bad?” Why couldn’t he just say what he meant, straight, none of this subtext? She was too tired for subtext.

“It will be just fine. You’ll feel better in no time. And hopefully, you’ll be discharged sometime tomorrow or the next day.”

“Mm, discharged. Music to my ears.” She couldn’t help smiling at him, even though the ache in her arm was grinding the bones in her shoulder, making her lips turn down. She thought she’d smiled at him, anyway, and he was giving her a soft little smile back, so maybe she’d done it right.

“Can I sit with you?” he whispered. “While you fall asleep?”

She blinked, stunned by the question. “Since when do you ask?”

But he didn’t laugh, he didn’t look smug. He looked sad. “I’m asking, sweetheart. Can I?”

It felt momentous. Ominous.

It felt like an entirely different question was being asked here.

But she wanted him.

“Sit with me,” she murmured. And then she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to face it, whatever the real question she’d just answered had been.

\-----

When the nurse came to wake her and check her neurological responses, Kate was barely conscious for it. Castle was still in the bed with her, but she was splayed over his thighs, her arms and legs curled around his limbs. It seemed wrong for the nurse to see, but she was efficient and professional and she didn't say a word.

The light was still off; he could feel Kate breathing slowly against his inside thigh. 

"Nurse?" he asked quietly. He didn't know which one she was. There were three names on her white board, plus the name of the pain medication, dilaudid, and how many milligrams. She'd taken a pill right after a meager, awful-smelling cafeteria lunch, and it was keeping her pretty under.

"Is there something wrong?" the nurse said.

"I was wondering about - about pain management," he said, using the buzz word he'd picked up from the night nurse. "And. Addictive behavior. The board says she's on diladud and-"

The nurse looked surprised, and she lifted her head from the chart, peered through the dim light towards the white board where the drug name glowed. "Oh, no. That's wrong. She's not on that any longer. I'm sorry. Let me fix it." The nurse moved to the white board and began erasing the black marker in broad strokes, clearing off most of the facts Castle had thought were true.

Ibuprofen. She was on prescription ibuprofen. That was all. "What about the risk of bleeding?" he said.

"They've looked at her CT scan," the nurse explained. "And you don't want her to be feeling that broken arm. Surgery was extensive. It's the lesser of two evils right now."

"Okay," he said, nodding to himself. "No more dilaudid at all?"

"Probably not. Concussions need at least six to eight weeks of rest. You don't want to mask the more severe symptoms with heavy narcotics."

And he didn't think heavy narcotics was a good idea for Beckett. He'd be here, hell yes, he'd be here, but he still didn't want to try to wrestle Beckett away from any addiction they could possibly avoid. 

Fuck, he didn't know what he'd do if she-

"You're Rick, is that right?"

"Yes," he said cautiously.

"I'm Rhonda, one of the day nurses. I've got our names up on the board now, as well as her current treatment. If she wakes before I come back in to check on her, then you push that call button and we'll see about pain management. You have concerns over addictive behavior?"

"No," he barked, scared he'd fucked her over now, scared Rhonda might try to write that down in a chart somewhere. "Not at all, not her. I was thinking - just - it's a strong opiate and I wondered what was already in place to just..."

Fuck.

"All right," Rhonda murmured. She didn't quite look convinced. Hell, Castle would have to get Eastman to check Beckett's chart before they left tomorrow. Make sure nothing untoward had gotten marked down. "Feel free to call if she needs something."

"Thanks," he said, just hoping she'd leave now. Just leave before he said something else stupid.

The nurse gave him one last look and moved for the door, opening it softly, closing it softly, being considerate. 

The lights were still off, the room dark with the door shut all the way, Kate a heavy weight in his lap.

Shit. Even when he was trying to look out for her, he was fucking it up.

\-----

She woke with pain.

A light in her eyes. She mewled and turned away, but arms held her, a voice down to her ear, soothing. The light returned. She vaguely came to awareness, tracked the nurse's finger, understood.

Comprehended.

"Okay, you're done. Thank you, Kate. Go back to sleep."

She groaned but she heard the door closing, realized she was sweat-drenched, tangled in arms and legs. "Castle?"

"Yup. It's me."

"Too cheerful," she rasped.

He laughed. She hated him. Her arm was agony. He was stroking his fingers along her forehead and there were these flickering instances of intense awareness there, along the skin he touched, skimming, before her concentration slammed back to pain. Pain.

"The pain meds are crap," she grunted.

"It's basically ibuprofen," he sighed.

"Well, hell, that does no good. I eat advil like candy," she muttered at him. "Help me sit?"

"Yeah." His hands were capable, so capable, strong and sure. He tugged her right up to sit beside him now, but she shivered when her body touched the cool sheet. She'd rather sweat and be overheated than shiver, the ache of cold down to her bones. 

Kate curled her body to meet his, slid her knee up over his thigh, laying over him. "You don't mind."

"I don't mind." He was humming; she felt the grin even if she couldn't see it. Didn't care.

"Talk to me," she demanded.

"About what?"

"Anything other than here," she got out. Soon as they deemed her concussion free, she needed some oblivion. Life sucked right now. Her arm was a fragile thing, filled with shards of glass. She kept jarring it.

"I had a dream that we went to the Congo together."

"Mm?" She swallowed down the scratch of her throat, tried to adjust her arm without pain.

Castle's fingers came over her injured ones, stroked back to her knuckles and then down along the soft cast, sending tantalizing sensation back up to her shoulder. He touched his lips to that place under her ear, entirely distracting.

"I sent you that photo of the view outside my window-"

"I remember. Pretty." If pretty was like the feeling curling in her guts, wild and dangerous. 

"I woke up from that dream of you and took the photo because I wasn't sure I'd ever get the courage to tell you my dream."

"Oh? What was it?"

"I kidnapped you," he husked. "You were my captive."

She smiled against his chest. "Right to be afraid."

He chuckled, fingers stroking down over the cast to her elbow. Her own fingers unfurled from the plastic of the soft cast and splayed at his collarbones. His skin was so warm here, right at his throat.

"I took you with me into the heart of darkness, and we lived together in this jungle hut up in the trees."

"A treehouse?" she smiled.

"Yeah. It had rope swings and a ladder we rolled up at night to keep the animals out."

"Baby, all the animals in the jungle can climb trees. Even the panthers like you."

"I'm a panther?"

She shrugged, mortified, but he wasn't laughing.

"I'd have said you were a panther," he murmured. "That's interesting. We both panthers, Beckett?"

"I don't know. Whatever. A jaguar then."

"Oh, a jaguar. Those aren't found in the Congo."

"Figures," she sighed.

"Jaguars bite their prey directly in the skull, did you know that?"

"I... no?" she laughed. It hurt her head to laugh, jostled her arm, but Castle was stroking up up up the cast to her fingers like he was sloughing off the pain.

"Right between the ears. Their jaws are so strong that their teeth puncture the skull and deliver a fatal blow to the brain."

"Then that's you," she sighed. "Fatal blow."

He was still for a long time, and she was drifting now, calmed by the touch of him along her fingers and down the cast to her elbow now. Out along her spine. Over her ass. That was nice. That felt good, made her feel special somehow, like he still wanted her even though she was ruining his furlough.

"Sorry you're not getting any," she sighed.

"Any what?"

She grunted, dug her elbow into his waistband above his-

"Oh, oh, okay. Easy there, tiger. Jaguar. Panther? Whatever you are. I'm not getting any but having you draped all over me and talking into my neck is seriously doing wonders for me, so... easy."

"It is?"

"It's you," he muttered. He sounded like he was rolling his eyes. "Even flat out and injured, it's obscene how much I want you. You know you're beautiful like this, Kate? Pain makes you - alive. I don't know. It seems wrong to admit, but you are so much stronger and more... more. Than anyone else I've ever met."

She breathed slowly into the sex and sweat smell of his shirt, remembered how she'd talked him into it just a few hours ago, yesterday? felt now how he touched her. 

Might not be a total loss. He was really into her. They'd made a lot of things work that shouldn't, probably, and she was more than willing to take whatever he wanted to offer.

Wow, that sounded pathetic. But so fucking true. She'd take anything. Any of it. Sex with him was fantastic and it wasn't just because she was young and her experience had been limited and partners immaturely young. It was just fantastic.

"You're beautiful, Kate. It makes me want you, but it makes me want to - to touch you like this too. You know? I've never had anyone that I could just trail my fingers over and be content. Content because I don't need anything other than this. Anything you have, I'll take. Anything."

Anything.


	5. Chapter 5

“Sometimes, I think of you like a baby dragon.”

“You do what?” She was shifting against him, but he exerted a little pressure over the back of her shoulders and kept her there.

It was definitely easier to say this stuff when she wasn’t looking at him. “A dragon. Okay, maybe not a baby, but a teen-aged dragon? Breathing fire and righteous indignation and all this shimmering armor.”

“That’s not sexy, Castle.”

He grinned into the top of her head, kept one hand buried in the soft hair at her neck. “It is to me, Becks.”

“A dragon?”

“Mm,” he smiled. Her hair was like silk at the back of his fingers, her skin was warm where they touched. He used his other hand to trail up and down her injured arm, wishing he could absorb the pain, hoping to bring it into himself.

“You’re nuts.”

“Dragons are beautiful and rare-”

“They’re imaginary.”

“Means it takes a special kind of person to have a dragon-”

“Like St George, who fucking slew the dragon.”

“Slew?”

“Chopped his head off.”

“I’d rather not chop your head off. I was thinking - tame.”

“Tame?”

Whoops. Too much; she was too with it for that kind of thing.

“You slay me,” she mumbled. There was a kind of chuckle under it, and then she got still, stopped moving against him, like waiting. “You slay me, Castle.”

“I think it’s mutual,” he whispered. “Whatever’s going on here, Kate, it feels very mutual.”

She turned her cheek into his chest, buried in the space between his arm and side. As if she had to hide.

“Kate?” Ibuprofen, he reminded himself. Not narcotics. Just damn advil. He had to be so careful. Pain could distract for only so long. “Kate, I won’t take it back.”

She had her good hand in a fist at his side, practically under his back, but it felt like she was hanging on for dear life.

“Dragon or panther or just - some beautiful creature I haven’t managed to name yet - doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all. I got a phone call yesterday that made my whole world stop, and I can’t unknow that.”

“What happened?” she mumbled from his side.

He closed his eyes, struck to the soul. “You happened.”

Was there no way to reach her?

“Oh,” she sighed. She hadn’t moved from his chest but he could feel her lips brushing him as she spoke. “I didn’t mean to happen.”

“I know. Too late now. I wouldn’t have anyone else.”

She didn’t answer you don’t have me. She didn’t answer at all.

That’s how he knew just how bad the pain had to be.

So he held her and he smoothed his fingers over her body, and he told her stories about Africa, stories about locking her up in his tree house and how they’d wear loincloths placed strategically and have a pet panther with a flicking tail and baleful yellow eyes that they could ride. He made it up out of the air, like it was a movie he was watching and describing to her, and she fell back to sleep at the best part-

When he slipped the loincloth off her shoulder and kissed the skin it revealed.

\-----

She dreamed she was sweating. She dreamed her fingers were curled around him and he was moaning her name and the sweat slicked down her bare back and the jungle stirred and called back to them.

She dreamed there were stars and a river. She dreamed an orgasm like lightning.

When she woke, the room was still dark and Castle was still there, arms around her like he was holding her in. 

She hoped she wasn’t crying.

Kate lifted her head and his fingers snagged in her hair, loosened, his thumb brushing her cheekbone to her ear. “Hey there,” he whispered. “How you feel, sweetheart?”

“Good,” she husked. She’d come like lightning. Caught fire.

“Yeah? You do?”

“Mm. For the most part.” She shifted but had to freeze, pain wakening fast and licking through her. “Whoa. Fuck. Okay. Never mind.”

“Just stay still, stay right here. Don’t try to move.”

“Fuck.”

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

“This really hurts,” she got out. Fuck, she never admitted shit like that. Very stupid, letting someone see how badly it ached.

“I’ve been talking with your nurses and they think the doctor will prescribe you something after today.”

“Yeah?” she panted. If she stayed very very still, it didn’t break her apart. “Fuck, you gotta stop breathing, Castle.”

He actually did.

He actually stopped breathing. Longer than he should have too, because time stretched out and he was still motionless and she felt like shit for saying it, felt like shit for letting him know it was a thing, and then he cupped the back of her neck and shifted her off of him.

“No,” she cracked.

“I’m getting you some fucking medication. This is ridiculous.”

“No, don’t-”

“Kate.”

She closed her eyes, fists clenched, but the nurse had said, that first night, something about how she had to stay on top of it or six weeks down the road she’d still be hurting like this. She didn’t want to hurt any more. She was so tired of hurting.

Don’t go.

But he hadn’t moved from her side. He stood by the bed and stroked her hair back from her face and laid his other hand at her back. Stroking. Stroking. Rhythmic and soothing. She felt like blades had run through her arm, like she’d been used for a fucking magic trick that had gone horribly wrong.

“Kate, love, I’ve called the nurse. She’ll come and have to get you something stronger. They can’t give you narcotics but there are other things.”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“If I have to, I will fucking go to my father to get you medication. Okay? We’re going to fix this.”

Fuck, she really was crying.

“It’s going to be just fine. I’m going to take care of you, Kate. Don’t cry, honey. It’s gonna be fine, real soon, be just fine. You hear me? Kate?”

He was hovering so close, so infinitely close, but she couldn’t open her eyes. Any movement would collapse the tenuous balance she’d struck.

Her fingers felt cramped but she didn’t dare move. 

“Breathe, Kate. Breathe. There you go, there it is. Just keep breathing shallow if you have to. Oh, good. God, thank you. She’s in a lot of pain. Something has to be done.”

The light came on, blinding her behind her closed eyes, and she cried out, stiffening with the agony that cracked her bones.

“Okay, Kate? Kate, can you tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10-”

“Nine,” she scraped out. “Nine.”

“Fucking hell, Beckett. It’s a ten. Or more. If she says it’s a nine, then it’s gotta be fucking fifteen.”

She’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so damn bad. She’d laugh because, fuck, he knew her so fucking well.

“Okay. Let me call the doctor.”

Oh, please.

“I got you, Kate,” he was whispering. His hand was on top of her head, heavy, weighing her down, keeping her from turning inside out with it. “I got you. We’re gonna get you feeling better. Just hang in there, sweetheart.”

\-----

There was an hour of hell in which Rick Castle actually pulled out his phone to call his father - twice.

Twice.

In the end, he only called Eastman, because the coterie of doctors discussing her case agreed on a course of pain management with words he didn’t recognize and since Eastman had always been the one who mopped up Castle’s spills, he was the man Castle wanted informed on this.

At no time had Beckett lost consciousness. At every point in that hour, she had been awake and alert and in agony. He’d seen it in the tight pinch of her mouth and the narrow lines of her closed eyes. She’d stopped responding to his voice, but he’d been able to tell she was listening, hearing him.

She just couldn’t take her concentration off of not making it worse.

They’d injected a muscle relaxant into her IV and that had scaled the pain back. Enough to let her breathe. Enough for Castle to ease her upright in the bed once more. And then the damn doctors had peeled off the soft cast and checked her stitches for infection and she’d gone rigid all over again.

He was going to murder every last one of them. Especially the short one with the slick hair and winning smile who had kept prodding her. 

Murder.

Her fingers came sloppily to his arm, knocking against his pecs before catching the sleeve of his shirt to hang on. “I’m okay. Okay. You can stop it.”

“Shh,” he hushed, taking her hand away from his shirt, kissing her fingers. He put her good arm back down. “Don’t. You should sleep while you can.”

“I’m fine now,” she mumbled, he eyes rolling a little in her head. They’d finally given her a lidocaine block which would degrade quickly in the next few hours, but they’d successfully avoided the heavy narcotics.

He was hesitantly glad. He hadn’t wanted to ask about her being an addictive personality again, and every medicine he’d repeated to Eastman that the doctors had discussed had turned out to have extremely difficult withdrawal periods. 

Lidocaine was a different class of drugs. 

He really wanted Eastman to look at that damn chart. Eastman was the one who yanked the pain meds when Castle had been in Ramstein that first time; he’d been the one to figure out that Castle and pain meds didn’t mix. Not even his father had figured that out. Eastman had read up a lot on them since then.

Kate hummed and shifted on the bed, her brow twisting for an instant like she’d had a moment where it had come back. And then her body eased, very slightly, her breath released.

He rubbed his thumb into the residual lines over her forehead. “Try to sleep. Not sure if it will come back again. You should sleep.”

“They say why?” she sighed. Kate smacked her lips and opened her eyes again. 

“Postanesthetic shivering,” he whispered, petting the hair back from her face. “Muscle contractions caused by a reaction to the anesthesia. Happens sometimes.”

“I was cold,” she murmured. “But you kept me warm.”

“Yeah, I tried,” he said quietly. He stroked the wisp of hair that wanted to curl up and around into her mouth. Tried to tuck it behind her ear. She was watching him, her eyes big and brown.

“You think you love me,” she said softly.

“I don’t think,” he sighed. “I just do.”

“That’s not a good idea.” She had closed her eyes again, her words garbled by her own breathing. Her lips parted.

Castle leaned in and touched his mouth to hers. “Wasn’t my idea, love. You did it to me.”

“Am I interrupting?”

Castle stood slowly and found Eastman in the doorway, silent as a ghost, watching him. He gestured for his CIA handler - and friend - to enter, and he turned back to Kate. “Her chart’s hanging on the end of the bed. Will you look at it for me?”

No sooner had he said the words than Eastman was opening it up, and only then did Castle hear the soft footsteps coming in under his partner’s. Castle turned his head and saw with surprise that a woman had followed Eastman inside.

A blonde, short, round face, blue eyes. Steel core.

“Carrie?” he croaked.

She smiled, folded her hands together before her. “You work with Mark? I’m sorry about your girlfriend. I hope they find something to help her.”

Castle cast a baffled look to Eastman - Mark. What was he supposed to say? What could he say?

Eastman wasn’t supposed to be doing this. Two worlds. Two worlds and they were supposed to remain separate, never the twain shall meet-

Oh.

Oh, he’d already broken the barrier, hadn’t he?

Castle reached out a hand, offering it to Carrie. “I’m Rick. The one sleeping, finally, thank God, is Kate.”

Carrie grinned now, looking pleased. She took Castle’s hand and shook, her grip firm, pleasant, used to doing as she liked. “Carrie. Nice to meet you, Rick.”

“Thanks for letting him come. I’m sorry to interrupt your weekend. I know he doesn’t get many.”

She mimed turning a lock in her mouth and tossing away the key, a little sly smile on her face as she did it. Holy fuck, and Carrie knew?

Eastman lifted his head from the chart. “You’re in luck. These guys seem to know what they’re doing. They’re going to give her a couple more lidocaine blocks through the course of the day, and that should knock the pain down to a dull roar, give the prescrip advil time to work.”

Castle let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Carrie suddenly reached out and gripped his forearm. “Hey, you’re gonna be okay. She’s gonna be okay. Scary, receiving a call like that, your girlfriend shot on duty. But she’s alive, and she’s going to make it.”

Castle nodded, swallowing, cut his eyes to Mark.

He shook his head.

No. Carrie didn’t know everything.

\-----

There was kind of a party in her room.

If by party she meant sad and quiet and Castle looking like he’d been shot and not her.

But people. And things. The nurse kept frowning at them all when she came in to check on Kate, but it was visiting hours and this was Castle, who did whatever the hell he pleased.

And if she said she wasn’t secretly thrilled by that she’d be the biggest fucking liar on the planet.

It was difficult to figure out what Carrie knew and didn’t know. She seemed to know it all, but disclaimed the knowing. Kate wasn’t sure how she could live that way, the pretending, the shared secrets that never got spoken.

Castle told her things, all his things, spilled it right out. But Mark Eastman seemed reserved in the extreme until he turned to Carrie and just - lit right up. Holy fuck, it was a marked changed in him. Not that he was animated - animated was never going to describe Eastman - but he had whole conversations with Carrie in softly spoken tones.

Maybe because of Kate, and the way her head pounded and her arm tingled like she’d had a cavity filled and sensation was slow to return. Everything felt numb and dead and Castle was leaning a hip against the bed and twitching.

Carrie had one chair, Mark the other; they looked settled in. There was conversation being had, over her head, around her, and she sometimes managed a comment, but she was seriously worn out. Never had something dragged her through it before, like that, and she had no energy to deal.

“Rick,” she muttered, lifting a hand to grab at him. Anything she could get her hand on. Her finger caught the waistband of his jeans and the so very warm skin below his t-shirt burned through. “Rick, just - sit, will you? Driving me crazy.”

“Sorry,” he blurted out. He was nervous and jittery, and she couldn’t look at him for too long. Made her feel anxious for no good reason. He was hesitating at her bedside, like he wanted to obey but he didn’t want to leave her.  
That was kinda sweet. She could admit that it was sweet how intensely he wanted to help her but just didn’t know how. No one could. It was just life. Her choices had led her here, her pain to deal with.

“Just shift me over and sit,” she told him.

“Are you... sure?”

“I can’t feel my entire arm,” she said. “It’s fine. Sit before I hit you.”

Carrie was chuckling, flashing her a brilliant smile from the visitor’s chair. Eastman was in a stolen chair - another stolen chair - these CIA boys were good at that, appropriating things.

Castle got close, tenderly drew his arms under her, began moving her to one side. She felt nothing; it was fine now. She was exhausted and a little cold, even with the hospital blankets and the stretchy yoga pants, but she could already feel the heat radiating from his skin.

“How’s that?” he whispered.

“Sit,” she insisted. He put a knee into the mattress beside her and carefully slid into place. She immediately turned, body pressed to his body, his heat soaking down into her clothes, the covers rumpled but everything else finally in place.

“Better?” he whispered. She could hear Carrie and Eastman sharing some conversation in the chairs and it really was a party. It was stealing time with this guy she’d met and liked and flirted with and those intimate moments when the whole room was filled with people but it was just the two of them alone.

“Better,” she murmured. “Don’t move.”

“Won’t move,” he promised.

“Carrie is here,” she sighed. She’d been going somewhere with that thought. She was struggling to bring it back. Oh. “You guys are - off-duty or something?”

“I told you, Kate. I’m not picking up another mission for a good long while.”

“And my wife thanks you,” Eastman cut in. Kate turned her head and he was smiling, that easy, controlled smile. Carrie was rolling her eyes.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like my alone time,” Carrie said. “But it’s nice to have him. Not sure what I’ll do with him when we’re not having sex.”

Eastman colored. His face actually went red.

Castle laughed, maybe a little too loudly, the kind of laughter that spoke of needing it. But Kate smiled too, chewed on her bottom lip.

“Mm, I know that feeling,” she said. “I’ve put a dent in that getting shot. But I bet Castle can figure it out. He’s highly motivated.”

“Holy shit, Kate,” he groaned, tilting his head back against the raised bed.

Carrie laughed, sharing her look with Kate, and Eastman was giving Castle these good-natured see, not so funny when it’s about you? comments, but there was something about having someone who knew exactly what it meant to be the one alone so long.

Carrie smiled at her, sitting side by side with Mark Eastman, her very own spy, and even though they probably hadn’t seen each other in the same eight weeks Castle had been missing from Kate’s life, they were barely touching.

Their knees. Knees touched. That was all. Like they’d long ago mastered it.

Or maybe they didn’t feel it. Maybe Carrie took what was offered and didn’t need it when it wasn’t.

Kate wished, desperately and clearly and achingly, that she could figure out how that worked.

Because she was failing at it. And having him here with promises of not picking up another mission only made it worse, harder, more spectacular a failure.

But she didn’t lift her head from his shoulder and she didn’t untwine her leg from his.

She didn’t have the energy to wean herself from him. 

\-----

The pharmacist who had thought of using the lidocaine came in to check on her while she was asleep. He was easy to talk to and gave Castle the chance to ask questions, even paged through Beckett’s chart and pointed out the different aspects of her care.

Castle, of course, had been given family member status and therefore was allowed privileged information due to a little form Eastman had forged. Beckett had never signed it, but when had that ever stopped him?

And then on the heels of the pharmacist came Jim Beckett.

Castle sat up straighter, still sitting side by side with unconscious Kate, but there was no way in hell he was going to leave. Not after-

No.

Jim stood awkwardly for a moment in the doorway. Eastman cleared his throat and gave Castle a pointed look until he introduced them.

“Ah, Jim, this is one of the guys in my squad, Mark Eastman. And his wife, Carrie. This is Kate’s father.” There were handshakes, Eastman said something laughingly about being Castle’s commanding officer, and Carrie was giving Eastman those knowing eyes.

She was the one who really loved the lies. She thought they were hilarious.

He wondered if Kate thought they were hilarious.

“How’s she doing?” Jim asked. Eastman had stood and was pushing his stolen chair towards the bed, guiding Jim towards it. Her father looked abashed for a moment, but then he sank down, his hands on his knees. To his credit, his eyes never left Kate’s face.

“She’s been in a lot of pain, but we’re hoping to manage it,” Castle answered.

Jim’s mouth pinched. “I’m grateful you were here, son.”

Castle was having a difficult time feeling forgiving. He had seen her father earlier today, pushed coffee down his throat and tylenol into his hands, gotten the man with it enough to head into work because that was Kate’s biggest worry.

That her father would be disbarred. And then how bad it be. No job. Nothing to get up for. He knew she was afraid; she had cried about her father with him before. So he was going to do what was necessary to get Jim Beckett on his feet.

“Grateful you are here,” Jim corrected. “You’ve been good for her. Woken her up.”

“I’m not waking her-”

Jim gave a rusty smile. “Woken us both,” he amended. “Pushed us into living. It hurts, but it’s worth it. I’m - heading into rehab.”

Castle braced himself, grateful Kate wasn’t awake for this.

“I told the partners in my firm.”

“You what?” he rasped, sitting up and accidentally jostling Kate. She didn’t wake, but Castle covered her ear with a hand. “You told them?”

“Gotta stick this time, huh?”

“Jim,” he pleaded. But it was too late. He’d ruined things.

“They’ve given me a leave of absence. The program is six months.”  
“Six months?” Castle hissed. He could see Eastman and Carrie trying to fade into the background. “Six months.”

“It has to stick,” Jim said again. This time the desperation shone through. “I can’t be - I got a phone call from her sergeant yesterday and I couldn’t even - couldn’t even get to my daughter’s hospital bed.”

“I know,” he clipped. “She knows.”

“I know,” Jim echoed, something mournful. But he’d never made excuses for it, never. Apologetic, yes. Blind, no. “I can’t do it, Rick. I can’t do it to her any more.”

Then stop drinking. But obviously that was impossible. “Six months is a long time. Where?”

“California. I’m going to make a clean break of the alcohol. She - uh - she told me a couple months ago that if I would just promise her...”

“What promise?” he said.

“I should go,” he said instead, head shaking. “I’ve booked a flight. I’ve got to pack clothes. Nothing else. It’s going to be inspected.”

“She’s - it’s going to rip her up that you’re leaving without saying goodbye.”

Jim ran a shaky hand down over his eyes and it stayed there. “I don’t know that I can face her.”

“You have to,” Castle insisted, already shifting back in the bed to touch Kate’s shoulder. “I’m waking her. You have to. There’s been too much leaving. She’s been left too many times.”

“I know,” Jim nodded, dropped his hand. “I’m not ready for it. But-”

“Kate,” he urged, dropping his face close to hers, thumb along her cheek. “Kate, love, wake up. Wake up for me, just a second.”

It was like dragging her through water. She came aware for half a second and submerged again, but he kept calling her name, waiting until she oriented to him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know you need sleep. But your dad is here.”

“Dad?” she husked.

Castle moved to get out of the bed, give them privacy. Kate’s fingers gripped his shirt but he tugged her free. “I’m just going to the bathroom. Getting some coffee. Want a cup, Becks?”

“Coffee,” she mumbled.

“Decaf,” he whispered, a kiss against her cheek. “I’ll be back. But let your dad talk to you.”

“I can’t-” she whined, but she cut it off herself, mouth clamping tight. Her eyes closed and when they opened again, she was back. “Okay. Help me sit up.”

He did, being careful, and her hand trembled when she lifted it to touch his arm, but she only squeezed and gave him a weak smile. She had this. She was good.

He kissed her again, soft, against the ridge of her eyebrow. “Proud of you,” he murmured. 

“Shut up,” she whispered.

He laughed and her smile was a little stronger. “Still am,” he shrugged. “You’re the strongest person I know. Even Eastman is a wimp compared to you.”

Some of the tension dissipated from the room, and Kate gave him such a damn grateful look that it made his heart soar. She was grateful to him. For making it okay again, for making things not so bad.

He could do that at least.

“Be right back,” he promised. He was making her promises with every word he spoke now. 

She nodded and he turned and ushered Mark and Carrie out the door.


	6. Chapter 6

"Katie, I'm going into rehab."

"Right," she said tightly, nodding. Last month it had been AA. He was going to AA; he was done.

"It's six months."

"What?" she gaped, sitting up too fast. Her head swam and she had to close her eyes. "Daddy-"

"It's a program in San Diego. It's six months; they've accepted my down payment and it was exorbitant to say the very least. And I have a flight out tonight."

She opened her eyes and stared at him. He gave her a watery smile.

"There goes your inheritance, kid."

Kate sucked in her breath. "If you..." Worth it. Worth everything if he- "It's a long time."

"It is."

"What about work? The firm? Will the other partners let you be gone-"

"I told them I have a drinking problem and that my daughter had been shot in the line of duty-"

She flinched. Line of duty. She'd been on a fucking personal mission of vengeance.

"-and I told them the shameful truth. That when I got the phone call, when my daughter needed me the most in her entire life, I couldn't put one foot in front of the other. So blind fucking drunk."

Kate froze. She'd never heard her father curse before. Never. "Daddy."

"It's shameful, and I know it." He was crying.

"Daddy, the day I needed you the most-"

"And I'm sorry, Kate-"

"The day I needed you the most was mom's funeral," she whispered. "And you were there. You made it - that day on the beach, taking me out of there and holding my hand, ruining our dress clothes in the sand and the winter cold and our tears froze in our lashes. You made me that stick figure man, remember? You said, if I hadn't been a lawyer, your mom always thought I'd be a carpenter. Dad, I needed you that day."

"And all the days since then," he said, shaking his head. "All the days - already down one parent, losing your mother, and what did I do? I've made you an orphan."

"Daddy."

"I'm going to San Diego so I can come back for you."

It felt real. It always felt real. She hoped six months. "Not for me," she said. "For you, Dad. Please. For you."

"I'm pretty much worthless," he said. "But for you-"

"You're my dad," she cried out. She clenched her fists to keep from really losing it. Keep from reaching for him like a five year old and clinging to his neck. Six months in San Diego. In rehab. Would it take this time?

"Katie, sweetie. Kate. I need to - need you to be here when I get back."

"What?" she husked.

"I can't - can't do this if I think you're... I know what you were doing. Mike Royce came to see me sometime after Rick did. He told me what happened-"

"Dad," she said sharply, turning her head.

"You can't just fling yourself at this, Kate. It's going to kill you. And then what's the point of six months of rehab?"

She pressed her good hand over her eyes, shoulders hunching.

"This drug dealer who shot you-"

"Dad-"

"You think he hired someone. You think it was him. Well, fine, that's - hell, that's closer than anyone has ever gotten to the truth of what happened to your mother. You know I can't - stand - can't stand to think... but if he took you too?"

"Dad, I'm sorry," she rasped, tears spilling out.

"If that man killed my wife and then murdered my daughter-"

"No," she choked out. "No, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry-"

"Don't do that to me, Katie."

She wept, rubbing one hand ineffectually at her eyes, shaking. Her arm was beginning to hurt, feeling coming back down through the tingling numbness. Ants crawled under her skin.

"I need you to promise me," he asked. "I need a promise."

"What about you?" she cried out. "You never promise me. How many times now have you sworn this is the end of it?"

He sat back, his face this terrible grimace of grief and shame. But he couldn't ask her to not go after this case. This man had ruined her life, had destroyed her family, taken everything precious to her and annihilated it.

"Okay," he said, sitting forward again. "Okay, you've got a deal. Kate. Katherine Beckett, you look at me."

Old habit made her hand drop from her face, her eyes flash guiltily to her father. 

"Six months. You and me, Kate. We've got six months to clean ourselves up. You hear me?"

"Six months?" she whispered.

"I'm getting sober and so are you."

"Dad-"

"You stay alive for six more months until I can make it back here. I stay sober until I can make it. Make it living back here again. We both need to learn how to live."

She stared at him. He had stood up now, her father somehow just as tall and imposing and formidable as he'd been when she was small and looking so far up to see him. Now he fumbled at his wrist and peeled his watch off. The watch her mother had bought him for making partner in the firm.

He gently took her injured arm and wrapped the straps around the soft cast, clasping it on the last hole, the very loosest it would go. She stared down at the watch, and belatedly realized he had dropped a kiss to her temple.

"You are my daughter, and I'm so proud of you. I want you to be proud of me again. Six months, Katie. Keep watch for me, because I'm coming back to you."

His hand fell heavy to the top of her head; she felt struck dumb.

He tugged lightly on her pony tail, the messy bun Castle had helped her with, tugging like he'd done when she was in middle school and ranting. That gentle tug that said, stop, Kate.

She swallowed.

"You gonna be here when I get back?" he said.

"Yes," she whispered, closing her eyes.

He rubbed his thumb at the back of her neck and leaned in to kiss her cheek, roughly. 

"Then I'll see you in six months."

She believed him, this time, because here was her father again. She had missed him.

\-----

Castle hung around outside the door, unsure of whether or not he should go in there. Her father hadn’t come out yet but he had coffee and he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to leave her with him when-

The door swung out and nearly clipped him in the shoulder. Castle darted back, blinking in surprise as the door shut again and Jim Beckett sank back against the wall. 

“Jim?”

The man startled, obviously not expecting to see Castle standing right there. He straightened up, rubbed his hand through the scruff on his jaw, gave Castle a sideways look.

“Well.”

“Well?” Castle prompted, trying to look over the man’s shoulder and through the window set into the door. “Is she-”

“I - uh - I shouldn’t ask this of you, Rick, but I feel it’s necessary.”

“Ask me what?” His gaze cut to Jim, surprised by the tears on the man’s face. Kate couldn’t be-

“I made Katie a deal, made her a deal to - come back sober in six months.”

Castle took a sharp breath. “You did? Sober. Can you actually deliver?”

Jim’s nostrils flared, some kind of remnant of his self-will asserting. Finally. He leveled Castle with a long stare. “I’m going to deliver.” He stood up straight, for the first time since Castle had met the man, straight and shoulders broad. “And you. Rick Castle. You’re going to watch her back. You’re a military man; you know how to handle yourself. You don’t let my daughter go up against this guy alone. You hear me?”

Castle froze, hands squeezing the coffee cups. “Sir-”

“I have no right. I know. I have no right to ask. But I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Don’t you dare let my daughter go after that man alone.”

“No,” he husked, shaking his head. “I won’t. I promise. And I deliver.”

Jim sucked in a breath that looked like it had been a long time coming. But he didn’t seem relieved.

“Jim. I’m - no longer in the army,” he told the man. He wasn’t sure how far he was going with this, but he needed the man to trust that Castle was going to do the right thing. Trust Castle enough to do work on his own issues, trust that Kate was going to be covered here.

“You’re - were you discharged? Did something happen, Rick?”

Even in the middle of all this, Jim was concerned about him. He didn’t know how to respond to Jim’s honest worry over him except by - well, honesty.

“I’m not a regular soldier,” he said quietly, leaning a shoulder against the wall, lowering his voice. “I’ve never been a regular soldier, sir. I’m in the intelligence services, and my work has to do with national security.”

Jim looked floored - completely bewildered by Castle.

Rick nodded and clutched the coffees in one hand, realized he was getting the other one free in case he needed to grab for Jim. “I have a little leeway to set my own conditions, and right now I’m between assignments. I won’t pick up another mission until Kate is completely recovered.”

Jim sank back against the wall, his head bowing. “Rick. I can’t - ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask. My choice, the moment I got that phone call. Just like you, Jim, that changed the game for me. It’s not a game. It’s her life. A life I want to have with her. So I’m staying.”

Jim scraped a hand down his face, finally lifted his eyes to Castle. “Wow.”

Castle waited, the coffees pressed against his chest, wanting to know what judgment Jim would pass on him.

Her father reached out a hand and took Castle’s, a brisk shake. Men. Cohorts. 

Family.

“I don’t know what to say,” Jim husked. “She knows-?”

“Of course. From the beginning.”

The man nodded, swallowing hard, another swipe of his free hand down his face. But he still had Castle’s in a firm grip. “That’s good. I would - I don’t presume to tell either of you how to do this. But a suggestion? Advice?”

“Yes,” Castle breathed, nodding. “Please. Anything.”

“She’s a lot like her mother. She’s single-minded and focused and passionate - but that comes at a price. The blinders she has on... they’re difficult to live with, because sometimes it means she’s not going to see you until the last second. Until you step right up into her and make her see you.”

Castle stared at her father, mouth open but no words coming out.

Jim nodded. “Okay. Well. I have a flight. I - son, I just - thank you. Thank you for what you’ve done for me, and for her, and thank you for this.” Jim took in a shaky breath and glanced down the hall; he looked lost. “I should go. You - go in there with her and you get right close. You have to be willing to make her.”

“I’m willing,” Castle said finally. “I can make her.”

Jim looked startled, as if he hadn’t just said those same words himself, like hearing them out of Castle’s mouth put a spin on them he hadn’t thought.

He let go of Castle’s hand finally, and instead reached up and patted Castle’s shoulder, then pulled Castle in for an embrace.

“You’ve been - family to me, these last few years. A constant. I’m - I want to see you when I get back in six months. I’ll be a better man, Rick. You’ll see.”

“Six months,” Castle echoed.

And then Jim was walking away.

Castle didn’t hesitate. He pushed open the hospital room door and came right inside, his eyes adjusting to the dark. 

She was huddled on the bed, her face pressed into her drawn up knees, her shoulders hunched and shaking. Castle’s guts tightened but he went straight to her, dropped the coffee cups on the side table, and wrapped his arms around her.

Kate sobbed, opened her arms up to him, and clung to his neck.

He felt the velcro of her cast catching at his skin and hard edges that dug into his throat. He caught her by the wrists and sank into the mattress, hanging on to her, not letting go, tried to draw her injured arm down to protect it.

“No,” she gasped.

“Kate-”

“No, he - he’s leaving.”

“Yeah, love, I know.”

“Six months in - in rehab.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, stroking her hair over her head, cupping the back of her neck. “Rehab is good, right, baby?”

She shuddered in another gasp and he finally got her arm loose enough to draw down between them. Something caught on his shirt and he glanced at her cast, but it wasn’t the velcro.

“What’s this?” he whispered.

“My - my dad’s watch,” she rasped. “I can’t.” Her face twisted and Castle pulled her back into his neck, letting her hide, letting her cry against him.

“It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart. Whatever happens, rehab now or later or - or - it’ll be okay. I’m gonna make it okay.”

“Can’t promise.”

“I promise,” he croaked recklessly. So damn reckless. But she was sobbing. She was crying and he’d been forced to watch as she endured agony for hours and it just wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay.

He cradled the back of her neck and got an arm under her knees, shifted them both back into the bed. He pulled her into his lap and laid his cheek against hers, folding himself over her.

Her good hand clutched his shirt, the injured arm cradled between them, and she cried. Everything, all of it, the whole misery of being shot and the pain and concussion and her father, all of it.

Him too, probably. She cried over him too, he figured.

No more. Never again.

He pressed his lips to her tears and didn’t make any more promises; he was going to have to prove himself with actions.

He was going to wake up with her every morning and fall asleep with her every night.

\-----

Kate felt herself dragged in and out of sleep, tugged by first his hand tangling in her hair, then by voices in the room, then a nurse prodding at her. 

And then she wasn’t awake, but she wasn’t asleep either. She wondered if it was dreams, because it all seemed out of her control, but she had these visions, these strange events playing out where Castle was standing by the ocean and she approached him and he turned to her and held his hand out to her, older and broader, deep wrinkles in the smile of his eyes, and she took it.  
She took his hand; it felt like acceptance.

She hadn’t meant to accept. She had only been - what had she been doing? Trying to find something. She’d been looking for her father on the beach, looking for the man of sticks he was winding together for her, cast-off twine and seaweed and the driftwood that came in bundles on the waves. She’d been looking for a stick-man, not this man.

He kissed her cheek. He danced close and her body buzzed and came awake.

He was kissing her. 

His lips were soft, chapped at the fullest part, his lips were trailing over her mouth and to her cheek, along the curve of her bone to her temple. Her lashes dusted her skin and hovered, eyes still mostly closed, the slit of sight showing only a strip of scruff at his neck.

She put her fingers to that place and his throat bobbed under her touch. “Kate?”

She was dreaming, or not dreaming, but she opened her eyes. He looked at her like a world, a universe, as if the swirling cosmos in his eyes were merely a reflection of what he saw first.

How could anyone see so much in her? 

She swallowed and dropped her hand to his shoulder. “Rick.”

“Hey.” No smile but the beginnings of one in those eyes. She’d been right about those crinkles; eventually they were going to crease the corners like crow’s feet. “Hey, you hungry?”

She had to work at swallowing but her stomach had opened up at his words, gaping. A maw. “Yeah. Starving.”

He grinned now, a touch of his lips down to hers like a swooping hawk; she felt plucked from the woods, winter hare, helpless to it. He was already shifting her - both of them - to sit up and she realized belatedly that they’d been lying in bed together, bodies twined.

“I think I cried all over you,” she winced, trying to get her good arm under her and move. She was restless; the lidocaine was back and doing a wonderful job. She felt clear-headed once more. 

“I think I might have cried back,” he gruffed.

She shot him a fast look; he wasn’t kidding. She saw the redness in his eyes and was horrified. “Castle. God.”

“Which one? Because God is really falling down on the job lately, and so am I, I think, so you know-”

“They’re not that interchangeable,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes at him. “Don’t start thinking you’re a god, Richard. That’s going to be very bad for us. For you.”

He cracked another smile, hesitant and sharp at the same time, and damn it. Damn it. He always got her. He just looked at her and she wanted to - wanted to - widen her legs and straddle his lap and press them so close they could be one body.

“Dinner,” he said. Emphatic. He was sliding out of the hospital bed; it was wide enough for both, wide enough for the morbidly obese plus some, but she was stuck. Saline and shit.

“Dinner?” she asked. She made a face at the side table where the tray had already been served. It was rank - fleshy green beans and bacon grease. She might vomit.

“I’m taking you out of here,” he said.

She startled, siting up straight. “You what? You’re taking me out?”

“Yeah, it’s a date,” he chuckled. He was peeling the tape off the IV stuck in the back of her hand; her heart was ricocheting in her chest. “Come on, Beckett. Live a little.”

“Oh, fuck, yes. Take me out.”

He slipped the IV needle out and pressed the gauze back down over the spot. “I can fix it later. You’re lidocained - you should be good to go.”

“You can fix it later?” she muttered, stuck on that.

He caught her knees and dragged them over the side of the bed and she felt her whole body exhilarating and thrilled - thrilling to him, to his touch, to a man more daring and reckless and intense than she was.

No wonder she ached for him.

“Come on. On your feet, baby dragon.”

“The fuck you say-”

“You like it. Little fire-breather.”

“You keep making me a diminutive, Richard, and we’ll see how well you like it.”

“Fair enough,” he grinned. His kiss was hard and fast and crushing, and he was dragging her to her feet. 

She was getting out of here.

This was probably a terrible, wonderful, awful idea.

\-----

When he got her outside in the hallway, Eastman was there. Kate paused, as if they’d been caught, but Castle kept his hand around hers.

“How’s it look?”

“Coast is clear. Carrie has a gift for this. I’ve been trying to recruit her.”

Castle laughed and he thought he heard Kate letting out that kind of breath that meant she was both surprised and excited.

She was excited. She wasn’t humming yet, but she’d had a fucking terrible few days. A smile was pretty top notch stuff from her right now.

“Let’s go, then,” he said, nodding to Eastman.

If she’d thought they were sneaking out of the hospital alone, she was going to be disappointed. No way in hell he was taking her out of here without some kind of back-up. Eastman was a crack field medic and Castle himself no slouch; he was confident they could handle whatever emergency might arise.

But they needed help getting out, first of all, and second of all, they needed camouflage. Other people to play their roles of a double date so that no one noticed the pale woman with the gunshot wound limply picking at her plate.

Or so he’d thought.

Beckett was doing pretty well. She stood at his side as they waited at the hall juncture, and then she took his stride easily enough as they rounded the corner for the elevators. Eastman made a field gesture for them to pause, and she actually knew it, stopping with him before the open lobby.

Another hand signal set them in motion once more and they were crowding on the elevator, a little breathless, Beckett actually giggling - she must be slightly drugged - and then Eastman pushed them to one side of the doors.

Castle blocked Kate from view as two nurses crowded on with them. Eastman was another wall, and Kate moved sideways to hide behind Castle, her hands gripping fistfuls of his shirt. He reached back and caught the edge of her hip, the thin scrub top he’d changed her into when he’d found those pants for her. 

She shuffled closer as the elevator descended; he felt her nose between his shoulder blades and her forehead at his nape. She felt so good, warm. He could barely breathe for loving her.

The elevator stopped and she lurched, so he gripped her tighter. Stay, stay.

The nurses got off on the floor - oh, fuck, maternity - and then the doors stayed open for a long, long second.

And then closed and the elevator started its slow way down and they all breathed again.

When Castle turned around, she was laughing silently, grinning up at him, and she lifted her arms to hook around his neck. Her body pressed to his and her mouth came after, close and intimate, her tongue taking from him.

He could feel the soft cast at his neck, pinching his skin, and he knew this was the worst and best idea he’d ever had.

“All right, you eejits. Let go of each other. We’re here.”

Kate broke from his mouth, that laughter in her smile, her eyes darting over his shoulder to Eastman. She leaned in close, whispered, “What’s an eejit?”

He laughed. “Us. Daft idiots. That’s us.”

“Oh, yes. I like it.”

\-----

She sat slumped against him in the cab; Eastman had waited in front of the hospital for his wife to show, but she and Castle had taken the first taxi in line. The air was sharp with cold, winter shoving its way in, but Castle had produced a sweatshirt from somewhere and she huddled into it even now, sliding on the slick plastic seat of the cab.

Castle reached out and caught her before she could slide off as they made a left, his hand wide and strong, his fingers digging into her thigh. She twined an arm through his to keep her stationary, and she let her cheek fall to his shoulder.

She couldn't believe he'd busted her out. Couldn't believe he'd actually done it - all his idea, just pull out the IV and take her.

He was used to disobeying the rules. Sometimes she forgot that side of him, misplaced it when he was inside her bedroom and a different kind of man. She would see glimpses of the spy, she often saw the raw man, but not the fun, and it was refreshing and alluring to have this strange combination of covert and reckless. 

He planned everything so carefully; she'd seen him with maps and notebooks and the factbooks, poring over the details and arranging the next mission down to the last. She'd slid into his lap and distracted him, but she'd seen how his eyes pulled away at the end. She always knew when he was about to leave.

When he first came home, he was close to this. This devil-may-care, this rakish and charming stranger who wanted to dive into the city headfirst and be part of everything. 

So of course when he was gone, she found herself taking note when she was in the boroughs, thinking to herself, He'd love that; next time we'll do this. It wasn't the tourist stuff, either: it was great taco trucks or an exhibit at the Met or the dodgy alley between the theatres in the district. 

But that was always her. She'd be the one seducing him with her city and he'd light up like a child, hands on everything, and then he'd find some way, some hidden place, and he'd ravish her in ways no one should ever be taken in public. The subway, oh, heaven, the subway when it was dark and lines were shut down and the cars were mostly empty and how his hands would purposefully wander.

His hands wandered now. Fingers tripped along the black yoga pants, riding high between her thighs to make her grunt into his shoulder. He was happy and he was excited and this time he was the one taking her somewhere, dragging her out into the city for its particular seduction.

"Where are we going?" she finally thought to ask.

"Remy's," he grinned. His kiss was at her cheek, the scrape of his two-day beard chafing her lips. "You need a burger, babe."

"I need french fries," she smiled back. His fingers played with the hem of her sweatshirt, his arm practically across her like a seat belt. She touched her good hand to his neck and found the scar, the line fainter now than it had ever been. 

He’d told her all about that scar, and how she’d made things right that had been wrong for so long. Foley. She’d done that for him.

"French fries and a milk shake," he added. His throat bobbed under her fingers.

Was he nervous? First time for them, this kind of thing. Even she knew that. He'd come to her wounded, he'd come to her furious, he'd come to her after failures and successes both, but he hadn't seen much of her side of things.

Except that day he'd gotten to the city early and lojacked her phone to find her working the corner for Vice. He'd been furious then, but at her, at Vice, at the asshole who'd been harassing her. Then he'd seen her side of things, but he'd dragged her into an alley and fucked her, even as she'd had to tell her partner waiting in the car, no, it's fine, it's not that; he has to talk to me about my dad.

She'd gotten about a hundred johns after that little encounter, like they could smell the man on her. 

Men.

"What're you huffing for?" he murmured.

"Thinking about you," she said, pressing her lips together to hold back the smile.

"Me? And huffing like a smoldering baby dragon."

She elbowed his crotch and he yelped, laughing, holding her off. His fingers were tight and his thumb pressed into the sensitive skin at the crook of her elbow. His body was overheated, or at least it felt that way, and she liked it, the flush and pink of his skin. He wasn't wearing a coat.

"At least you're thinking about me," he murmured. "Since I think about you constantly."

"You do not," she huffed, heard herself huffing and still couldn't stop it. 

"I do too," he protested. "I'd say you drive me to distraction, but it's kind of the opposite. You drive me to - intense single-minded focus. A kind of devotion."

She frowned up at him. "I don't even know what that means."

He tapped her nose, the insufferable ass, but he followed it with a kiss that was soft and a little overwhelming in its need. How he wanted her. Even after all this. 

He pulled back and let out a breath. "All about getting back to you. I carry you around with me, doing my job, every job, like you're riding with me, Kate. It makes everything a little more - exhilarating. Amazing. I wish - I wish you could come with me, but it's enough that I come back to you."

She blinked, stunned, and opened her mouth.

But he turned his head and jabbed his finger to the window. "There it is. You ready? Let's go."

She wasn't ready.

But he'd help. He'd make her.

\-----


	7. Chapter 7

They were alone at first, waiting on Carrie and Mark to arrive after them. They'd gotten one off from their usual table, this one a booth as well so that he sat on the same side as she did, and while she looked tired, it honestly didn't look much more exhausted than she usually did under these soft lights.

It was a waitress they knew, and she grinned when she came to them. "Let me guess - turkey burgers?"

"Actually, I want that whiskey BBQ burger," Castle said, nudging Kate when he was done. She roused and looked at him, maybe a little more tired than he'd have liked, but she nodded.

"Turkey burger for me."

"Usual stuff?"

"Yeah." Kate was leaning against him now, her chin hitting the top of his shoulder as she talked. She might be looking at the menu in his hands (though they never needed a menu) or she might just be resting. Or - touching. Maybe she just wanted to touch him like he wanted to touch her.

"And sweet potato fries," Castle added. "An extra serving."

"And two milkshakes," Kate jumped in. "Plus we have two more coming."

"I'll be on the lookout. Strawberry and chocolate?"

"Yes," Castle said with satisfaction; the waitress sidled off and he pushed the menu across to the other side of the table, ready for when Eastman and his wife joined them.

Kate stayed right where she was, didn't move even though her handy excuse had gone. Her left arm was between them, and she rested the soft cast on top of his thigh, heavy. "So, Carrie?"

"Yeah?"

"I like her. I'm sorry her weekend with her husband got ruined because of me."

"Not ruined," he scoffed. "Besides, they know what it's like."

Her chin came to the top of his shoulder again. "I'm tired. Sorry."

"Rest. Need your energy for those thick milkshakes. They're a beast to suck on."

She laughed, her nose coming into his shirt, and he wondered what that was about.

"Kate?"

"A beast to suck on?"

He opened his mouth, slammed it shut again, growing definitely, wonderfully uncomfortable. Pants tightening, hips wanting to meet the heavy weight of her casted arm. "Beckett," he growled.

"Mm, you said it, baby, not me."

"Wasn't there a rule in place about diminutives?"

"For me. Not for you. I think you should be my... hmm... my baby lion cub. All bristly scruffy fur." She stroked her fingers across the two-day beard growth and scratched at his cheek. Felt good and he closed his eyes, head dipping into her touch.

God, if he'd lost her.

"See?" she whispered. "Just like a baby lion. You're kinda cute."

He opened his eyes on a growl, playing with her, and she laughed. Her fingers curled around his jaw and guided him into her mouth, the first press of held-breath awareness, and then the touch of tongues, hesitant and exploring.

A throat cleared.

Kate hummed and kept hold of him by the back of his neck, bit his lower lip as she released him. He was breathing hard and her eyes were sleepy-sexy on his and he wanted nothing more than to put his hands all over her.

"Nice. Real nice, you guys. Don't make me lose my appetite."

Kate smiled, that slow, arching, gorgeous smile and tilted her head towards their late-arrivals. "Hello to you too, Mark. What happens when you leave Castle alone. He gets mauled."

"Not that I've ever seen," Mark snorted. Castle turned to look, to give his partner a thank God you said that, as it definitely would go a long way towards convincing Beckett she was his only girl, off or on a mission. 

He watched as the man guided Carrie into the booth ahead of him. The way he touched her, these light and careful glances of their hands, and just the care that he showed, being aware of her and what she might need-

"You don't get mauled out there in the field?" Kate said. "Somehow I don't see it. You're too gorgeous a specimen."

"I was a baby lion and now I'm just a specimen?"

Carrie laughed across the booth and Kate turned her smile that direction, and already they were falling into conversation, just that easily, like Kate hadn't been shot and in extreme pain the last time they'd seen each other.

Their waitress came back with water glasses for the table and the usual beers, and she stopped to get the Eastmans' orders, Mark doing his usual stoic reserve, turning off his smile and his grace around the outsider, just as Castle had seen him do a hundred times before - but which he didn't do with Kate. And never had.

That grace came back when the waitress had left, and Kate hummed something to herself beside him, like she'd noticed, but she stayed pressed against his side, close enough for him to feel that humming.

She was happy. He'd made her happy. 

It was one of the proudest moments he'd ever had, and it had nothing to do with making her come.

\-----

She liked Mark; he had a dry wit and he poked fun at Castle even when Castle didn't catch on. Like Eastman was quietly having a chuckle over there and his humor caught on, made Castle look a little brighter for it even if he didn't understand.

And of course, Kate couldn't help slyly adding a comment of her own, another layer to the barb, just a little sarcasm. And Castle would look at her and then back at Mark and he'd know something was being insinuated but not get the pop culture reference.

When that happened, Castle would grip her knee and glare at her, and his fingers would do really devastating things, regardless of the couple sitting across from them threatening to put them in separate corners.

She liked Mark. And Carrie was quiet but sardonic, a definite force despite her reserve. Actually, both the Eastmans were reserved and Kate wondered what it was like in their bedroom. 

She could very clearly see Carrie tying Mark up and Mark adoring her for it.

Well, fuck, maybe that was just sublimation on her part, maybe she just wanted to tie Castle up - the adoring he already did. She had him very well-trained.

"Stop thinking about it," he husked in her ear. Her cheeks flamed and she turned her head into him, their cheeks brushing, that bristle scraping her skin.

"Thinking about what?" she asked.

"You know. I can see it on your face, Kate Beckett."

"Can they?" she whispered. Not even embarrassed. Just horny. Seriously horny. Castle came into town and the sight of him turned her on - like a switch - like she was dormant until his voice caught her ear or his face filled her vision.

"Don't think so," he said. "Only me. I know what you look like when you're about to go down on me."

"Holy fuck," she breathed.

He grinned - bastard had done that on purpose - and his hand closed around her injured one under the table. She went back to her french fries, the burger picked at but not exactly eaten. The fries were amazing, though maybe that was because of the man breathing down her neck at every opportunity.

He wanted her. How he wanted her and touched her and she hadn't showered all day and she looked like she'd been shot and she was wearing a damn oversized sweatshirt but he didn't seem to see any of it.

It was intoxicating. And wearing her the fuck out even while it spiked her blood with adrenaline.

He'd taken her beer away from her though. Not a word spoken, just pulled it from her fingers and drank it himself, shook his head at the waitress when she came back to ask.

Insufferable. Domineering. Fantastic fuck. For those very reasons. 

"What am I gonna do with you?" she sighed, shaking her head at him.

"I can make you a list."

She laughed, caught unaware, and the Eastmans turned to them, but she didn't even care. She felt good. She felt shot in the arm and fucked at her brand-new detective job, but she felt amazingly, wonderfully good.

Her father was going to rehab.

\-----

“How’s the headache?” he said quietly, trying not to disturb her from his side.

She roused, looking around like she had just realized everyone had fallen silent for her. She glanced at Castle with one cracked-open eye. “It’s there.”

“You want dessert and coffee or do you want to head back?”

“Coffee,” she asked. That she asked at all made him want to give her things, everything, all things, but he held off on making grandiose, gross statements and instead signaled to their waitress.

“Coffee it is. But no dessert. Not even a cookie?”

“No, baby. Not even a cookie. But feel free.” She had slumped into the wall now, mashed into the corner of the booth, and he’d rather she was huddled into him, but she must have hit her limit.

Nah, no fun eating dessert without her. They all ordered coffee, Kate’s a decaf though she smacked his arm for interrupting and changing her order. Carrie snickered at her though and it devolved into something humorous and endearing (he hoped) rather than annoyingly domineering.

Though he was certain it was that as well.

Carrie was a good buffer, had saved his ass a couple times tonight, kept him from saying something too serious, too much. Eastman had told him once, You don’t tell a girl you love her on the first date, even if you do. Eastman knew him, and he supposed Carrie did too, by extension.

Running interference for him. His wingmen.

Kate was a little too knocked around to notice though. She shifted in the booth when their coffee came back, and it brought her up against his side once more. Castle used his left hand to do everything just so he wouldn’t jostle her, remind her where she was.

“How’s the dog?” she was asking Carrie.

The woman smiled. “A total sweetheart. Oh, I love that dog.”

“You should keep him,” Kate sighed. “I’m a terrible-”

“Oh, no. No, I couldn’t,” Carrie protested. “You haven’t see him mourning for you. He sits at the back door where we brought him in yesterday and he doesn’t move. He’s just waiting for you guys to show up.”

“You can tell that only women have been nice to him or cared for him at all,” Mark joined in. “He gives me this look like, what do you want? but he turns his head and obeys Carrie, first thing. You trained him well.”

Kate was flushed pink when Castle glanced down at her. She’d been the one to train their dog, her dog; she’d put him through a K-9 police unit with the training instructor and she’d demanded precision even from Castle when he was in town. Don’t reward him for that, Castle.

“You did good,” he murmured. “Cujo misses you.”

She didn’t like that though; she was shifting away from him and sitting up straighter, looking uncomfortable.

Carrie switched subjects just like that, evidently reading it in her face. Or maybe his. “When you’re feeling up to it, you should come out to the farmhouse.”

“Oh,” Kate startled. “I - yeah. That would be - really nice.”

“I don’t have a lot of women friends,” Carrie admitted. “It’d be nice-”

“Me either,” Kate rushed in, a sideways glance to him. “Hard to - explain all the time.”

“Yeah,” Carrie nodded. “No one really gets it. What you do for... yeah.”

Castle glanced to Mark and the man was giving him a surprised, both eyebrows kind of look. Evidently that had caught him by the throat as well, because his hand shifted on the table and folded over Carrie’s, just like that.

Castle was stuck, immovable, because if he did that, Kate would definitely give him another elbow in the crotch.

He did stroke his fingers over her slightly numb, injured knuckles, half-hoping she wouldn’t quite feel it through the lidocaine block, the other part of him wishing she’d lean into him again.

And then she did, shoulder to shoulder, and he nearly gripped her hand in surprise.

“When I start physical therapy,” Kate said then, “I’ll come over. Might have to wait to pick up the dog until then anyway since-”

“Why?” Castle interrupted, too startled to hold it back. “I can take care of the dog. I’m not that incompetent. Or well, you can tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Right?”

Kate’s mouth dropped open and she stared over at him. “But I’ve got - nearly six weeks before I’m in physical therapy.”

“So?”

“Six weeks of not being able to use my arm.”

“Well, fuck, Beckett, I have two. You can borrow one of mine. So long as you give it back eventually. You know. Untie me.”

The table laughed, Carrie and Eastman catching the quirk of his mouth and echoing it, but Kate looked flustered, a little panicky. “But that’s - six weeks. And then-”

Oh. Oh, fuck, he hadn’t precisely told her that he would be in town. “Uh-”

“Didn’t he tell you?” Eastman cut in smoothly. “We have training sims in two weeks, so Black grounded him until then anyway. No point.”

Kate turned to Mark, her face blanched, all of her pain and exhaustion showing so clearly, so vulnerably. “But two weeks... his father said to just stay?”

It was a lie, of course. They all knew it, except maybe Beckett wanted him enough to believe it. She wasn’t stupid and she didn’t bury her head in the sand, but on certain issues - like her father had told him - blinders on. 

“Two weeks isn’t enough time to do that thing in Marrakesh, so you know.”

“Marakkesh,” she murmured. “You were just there.”

“Here until training simulations,” Castle interrupted. He hoped he didn’t sound desperate; he felt desperate. Training sims? No. There were no training simulations scheduled for him - not when he trained year round after every single mission finale. And Marrakesh had been the thing he’d had to cut short to come back here when she’d killed Foley; he didn’t want her to dwell on that.

He glanced to Eastman to discern the truth of any of it, saw that the man had definitely had a conversation with his father, that was for sure. It probably hadn’t been pretty.

But Castle had been threatening his father for the last year, holding the whole thing over the man’s head - his father’s dealings with the Army program, the utilization of human beings for experiments long after MK-ULTRA had pulled the plug.

And those men had gone AWOL, massacred a whole Afghani village, and if his father thought to try Castle, to test him on this, he would find himself in fucking hot water over his recent actions during wartime.

Castle wasn’t fucking around. He was going to be here. Six weeks, six months, neither was enough. He needed to dig into Beckett’s mother’s case and get that shit contained, figure out what the fuck was the relationship between that hired killer and the men Castle had known in his father’s elite unit.

He was afraid-

“Castle?”

He glanced at her, eyebrows raised. “Yeah?”

“You have training for... how long?”

“However long it takes,” he shrugged. “Sometimes it’s months.” He couldn’t get away with telling her training sims would be longer, could he? No. She already doubted this.

“I don’t know that you should be doing this.” For me, she wasn’t saying. “Two weeks and then months more? That’s too long-”

“Oh, come on, Kate,” Carrie cut in. “Where he goes, mine goes, so just - you know - leave it be. I, for one, am going to enjoy this - until I get completely sick of him.”

Kate subsided, ducking her head, laughing a little. “Sorry, you’re right. We shouldn’t do that to you. I’m shutting up now.”

Eastman smiled that curling smile, nudged his wife until she elbowed him away, and Castle chuckled, relief so great he might be dizzy.

Thank you, Carrie.

It was apparently a group effort to get Kate Beckett to accept help. He was gonna have to seriously repay them for this.

\-----

She was swaying on her feet when the taxi pulled up.

Castle had her by the elbow and tugged her to the open door, folded her into the back of the cab. She was going to collapse, she thought, if she didn’t sleep. Soon. She just needed to close her eyes.

Castle leaned in and told the driver to head for Sinai, and she squirmed against the plastic seat as the cab pulled away from the curb. She turned her head and pressed her cheek to the seat, watched Castle as he leaned back.

“Scoot in,” she murmured.

He gave her a raised eyebrow and shifted over in the seat, got closer. She wriggled right up next to him and hooked her arm in his, drew a knee up over his thigh. His mouth touched her forehead, a kiss that pushed her eyes shut.

“Was it too much?” he spoke softly.

“No. No, baby, just enough.”

“Good. Drive is a little ways, especially in this traffic, so if you fall asleep...”

“Might,” she sighed. Her eyes just wouldn’t open again. 

“I’m not carrying you back into the hospital, baby dragon.”

She groaned, couldn’t move to save her life - or her dignity.

He was chuckling, his lips glancing along her temple, down to her cheek. “I’m so using your concussion to my advantage. What else, love? What else can I get away with?”

“Hate you,” she slurred. Her body was so heavy. All that food, her arm tingling as the lidocaine wore off, her eyelids like lead.

“I know you do.” His voice was barely a whisper; the tires against the pavement and slow crawl of the cab was making her drowsy. “I’ll have to wake you when we get there.”

“Is Carrie coming?”

“She went home to the dogs.”

“Eastman?”

“You got the hots for my partner?”

“Mmm.”

He laughed, but there was an edge to it that she liked even better. Too bad she was falling asleep.

\-----

She woke violently, arms jerking, pain lancing up swiftly into her shoulder, arrowing straight to her jaw and the base of her skull.

“Fuck,” she groaned.

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, it’s just me. Kate, we’re here.”

Well, no fuck. She figured that. 

“Stand up for me, Kate.”

She obeyed for some reason she didn’t understand, maybe to prevent from looking like an idiot, sacked out in the back of a taxi cab. Either way, she struggled to her feet and stood on the sidewalk in some strange, sushi-smelling alley, the darkness relieved only by a lone security lamp at the far end.

“Where you taking me?” she mumbled. Her head was throbbing now with the effects of the concussion and she really wished she hadn’t eaten all her fries.

Or the milkshake. Or the coffee. 

If she died here, that would be mortifying. Death by overindulgence. Death by doing too damn much.

“Castle.”

He turned from the cab, stuffing cash back into his pocket. His eyes were dark in the nothingness, blank and blue. “You called?”

“I...”

“Let’s sneak you back into your room.”

“We were gone hours,” she murmured. “They’ll know.”

“Okay, so we won’t really be sneaking then. Still, more fun to sneak back in.”

She wasn’t sure she could. Not that she didn’t love it, but she was craving that hospital bed something fierce.

“I’d be perfectly content with getting back to bed without falling over,” she said finally, wincing over at him. Her head was pounding so hard it was like a noise between her ears.

He didn’t say anything to that, didn’t humiliate her further by calling attention to her sudden change in mood. He just took her by her uninjured hand and began leading her through the dark alley towards a loading bay.

Eastman was there at the security door to let them inside and Kate hadn’t even noticed when they’d split from their friends. His friends. His partner and his partner’s wife? She had no idea. Her head felt split and cross-sectioned; she really needed to sit down.

Castle got her through the back halls and into the freight elevator. It was massive and echoing, the steel walls shiny and even stained in places. She could see a warped reflection of a pale woman with limp hair and an imposing man.

She bit her lip to keep from whimpering. Everything hurt.

“Lidocaine has worn off,” he said quietly.

She nodded. Tears were forming in her eyes and she wasn’t - she wouldn’t be doing that tonight. Not when Castle had thrown out the rulebook and taken her out.

Out.

“Hold my hand,” she rasped.

His fingers were immediately snagging hers, and then he was crowding in at her side and wrapping his free arm around her neck and she sank in against his chest, grateful and weak and completely uncaring.

“Thanks for coming on my big adventure,” he whispered. His arm was like iron along the back of her shoulders. She let her knees go a little and yet he still held her fast, like the added weight was nothing.

“I loved it,” she said finally. “I don’t care that I’m tired. I don’t even care that the lidocaine wore off.”

“You’ll be caring in a minute,” he grimly predicted. She huffed into his shirt as he went on. “I’ll care. I’ll sure as hell care when I have to sit there and watch you suffer all because I can’t keep track of the damn time.”

She didn’t want that. “Close your eyes then.”

“Don’t be mean,” he growled. “You matter to me. It sucks to see you in pain and I can’t do anything to stop it. But to know I caused it-”

“You didn’t cause shit,” she got out. She’d be shoving him away if she thought she’d be able to stand. “Vulcan Simmons shot me and he’s the one.”

“Is he in lock-up?” Castle asked suddenly. “Is he at the 12th right now?”

“No,” she growled back. “He - Royce didn’t catch him, he fucking administered first aid.”

Castle let out a breath she felt at the top of her head and the elevator doors opened with a mechanical whine. He put her away from him by her shoulders, started leading her down another long hallway.

“Royce saved your damn life, Kate, so don’t.”

“He should have clotheslined the fucking drug dealer who shot me, and then administered first aid.”

“I think you’re asking too much of Royce.”

“You would have. You would have had that fucker on the floor before he even shot me. Before I could have even tried that self-defense move.”

Castle’s hand tightened around hers. “Yes,” he said. His voice sounded funny but they’d just met the intersection of the back delivery hall with the main visitors’ hall. He was leading her across the waiting room lobby and towards the swinging doors of the step-down unit.

Eastman had disappeared after they’d come inside, she realized - better late than never. Back home to his wife, she hoped.

“I would have,” he said. “Which is why Royce is a shitty partner and I’m the one who should be backing you up.”  
“Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes before she could stop herself. Ow. That really hurt. Fucking hurt. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.”

Castle managed to time it perfectly. They strolled right past the nurses’ station while every person seemed to be absorbed or doing something else, and Castle pushed open the doors and led her down the hall to her room once more.

“Fuck, you’re good,” she muttered.

“I am. And you’re so tired, you’re complimenting me. Let’s get you in bed, Beckett. Nurse is supposed to come in and administer the last lidocaine block in an hour. Can you make it?”

“Mm, yeah.” Mostly. She’d try.

Once inside her room, the dim light from the bathroom was all she could see to illuminate her path. But it didn’t matter; she just wanted that bed.

Kate got an elbow into the mattress and awkwardly crawled in, felt Castle giving her ass a shove in help. She squirmed right down under the covers, not bothering to take off the sweatshirt.

“Castle,” she mumbled from the pillow.

He appeared at her side like a genie, stroked the hair back from her cheek. “Yeah, love?”

“Get up here.”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“Not asking. Telling.”

His chuckle was still vibrating in his chest when he arranged her body over his, both of them in the hospital bed, her eyes already closed.

She could feel his amusement but she also felt his sigh of contentment; she was too tired to make sense of it, to understand anything.

He was off for months. Months.

She had no idea what she was going to do with him underfoot.

\-----


	8. Chapter 8

She drifted up to consciousness, if not true wakefulness, and laid there tangled in blankets and a sweatshirt and him.

He was talking to someone, a low voice at her back replied, his chest rumbled below her aching jaw. Her face hurt in the way of a really hard sleep, but she was still too wrecked to move. Wrecked against his body in her hospital bed, beached here.

There were even waves. Rolling waves of numbness. She heard him like a siren song, bringing her out towards the lightening sky.

Her eyes wouldn't open, but honestly she wasn't really trying. She liked lying here, being nothing; she could do this for a little while yet before necessity - or reality - took hold.

Castle, under her, an arm draped around her shoulders with ease, was talking with that low, wonderful growl to his voice. What was it? A panther, a deadly thing she had somehow found a way to curl around. Frightening, now that she thought about it. And lovely. Her very own wildcat. 

He was practically purring. Sloe-eyed ate-the-canary contentment. She felt it vibrating under her, and she had to admit she liked it. How their bodies touched, connected, the powerful chemistry that was always going up like gun powder.

Oh, that was Eastman he was talking with. She felt safe with them. Felt like whatever was out there with Vulcan Simmons, whatever evil had broken through her home and murdered her mother with such brutal viciousness - that couldn't get her here. Couldn't even touch her.

"Did you do a search through the subsidized housing that's just down the block?"

She was confused for a moment by Castle's question, realized it was spoken over her head to his partner. Some kind of mission operations. 

"I did," Eastman confirmed. "But you know what it's like. They won't rat, won't narc on their king. Simmons is gone, Richard."

Simmons. She wanted to struggle, join in, but her limbs were so damn heavy.

"Not gone forever," Castle was saying. "He'll show up again. We should get a guy in Vice-" Castle cut off with a little laugh that Kate didn't understand. When he resumed, it was more of the same. "Well, there's my argument right there. He can't fight me on that. Someone has to be there when Simmons resurfaces."

"You can't be sure they're connected."

"No, but it's more than likely. You said yourself that Simmons' product is from those damn Afghani poppy fields. We built that. We created that - you and me, Eastman. We laid the groundwork, cooperating with those thugs just to oust a few hundred terrorists. And now we've left the whole damn country with a fucking drug war on top of it."

"We followed orders," Eastman said. "And just because Black's group was there doesn't mean they're here."

Here? Black's group? She didn't understand. The words had no antecedent for her. What group, what poppy fields, what thugs, what drug war? 

"They're here," Castle muttered. "They're here. This - you saw those crime scene photos. You saw what that looked like."

"But you and I, Rick, we've seen a lot of horror. A lot of terrible things-"

"The worst thing I ever saw - that day, God, that day, Mark."

"You've never talked about this before," Mark was saying. He sounded confused and she was too and she didn't understand - what day? What horror?

"I never - I didn't care before."

"You care now."

"It was - like oil. Do you know what I mean? It slides right off. But the stench of it just..."

"Yeah."

"I started having nightmares about it," Castle said. His voice was so rough under her ear that every word was distinct. "When Kate showed me - well, when I stole those crime scene photos, first thing I saw was that morning when we rolled into the village and those little girls - those little girls strewn across the road."

"Fuck," Eastman sighed.

"Fuck. That's what you said then too. I remember how turned off I was; I remember that. I remember looking at those little girls and thinking it was such a waste - of effort. Because someone was gonna have to clean that up, and whoever did it in the first place wasted all that energy for senselessness."

"Fuck," Eastman croaked again. "You tell the panel that when you had debrief?"

"No. Course not. I said it was a sorry thing and I went on."

"You know King was seriously worried about you. For a while there. Until her."

"I know."

"He said you lacked humanity."

Kate thought her heart might thrash in her chest, so hard was it beating.

Castle eventually answered with: "It's true. Was true. I think I did. But then I - you know."

"I know. Why I'm here, why I'm helping you do all this stupid, reckless shit you're doing."

"Thanks. You and Carrie both. Thank you."

"I know, I know. Just glad to see you care. Shed a few tears - good for you."

"Shut up," was scoffed, a little clutch in his throat that she felt in her guts. And then he cleared this throat. "It kills me to think that I might be - that my father might have created this."

"He didn't create her."

"But everything that's happened has shaped her. Shaped her into this perfect-"

"I wouldn't throw around perfect," Eastman chuckled.

"For me."

"Maybe so. But Black didn't do this." There was a silence in which Kate knew that they were both looking at her and she wished she had the energy to lift herself off of Castle's chest, to be - better than this, under this scrutiny - but she couldn't.

"No, I guess not." Castle sighed and his fingers in her hair shifted, resumed scratching lightly at her scalp. She was immediately drowsy in a soul-sucking way, like she couldn't escape. "I've been very careful to keep her away from him. Keep him away from her. But it won't be possible for much longer."

"No. Probably not. Especially if you think one of the Army guys did this. To her."

Did this. Did what to her?

"You saw those crime scene photos. You saw those little girls, how they were stabbed and strangled and shot - just - the overkill."

"If you're so certain, you gotta tell her."

Tell her. Shot, strangled, stabbed. 

Words floated around in her head without connection but she knew there was something in this, all of it, something being said more than just the uncomfortable feeling that he liked her a whole fucking lot more than he should.

Adored her.

"I can't tell her."

Tell her what?

"You have to. Eventually. You have to."

"Just give me... give me a chance to get established here first. It's gonna be hard enough moving in full-time."

Kate came to sharply, sucking in a breath and dragging her head off his chest. She sat up, blinking, dwarfed by the oversized sweatshirt, drowning in words without meaning. "Moving in?"

Castle stared at her.

Her head was pounding hard, pulsing behind her eyes, and she had to bow forward, sink her chin to her chest and prop her head up with her hands. "Ow," she whispered.

"Kate?"

"I... don't know."

Arms pulled at her, dragging her back down, down, his chest a warm and ideal place to rest. "Sleep, Kate. Go back to sleep. The IV is in."

What IV?

Even that last thought was too much, and she felt her body releasing, letting go, and she was adrift once more.

There'd been something about her case. The case. Something to do with her mother but just the word, just mother, alone, made her want to cry.

"Shh, sweetheart. It's okay. It's just the new meds. You're gonna be fine."

She fell asleep draped over his body, lulled by the tenor of his voice, certain there was more to this but that no one was going to tell her.

\-----

“Someone wants to see you,” Eastman murmured quietly. 

Castle roused, realized he’d drifted off in Kate’s bed, her body tangled around his. He lifted his hand from the back of her head, scrubbed it down his face. His cheeks were crisp with scruff and his eyes felt gritty. He’d forgotten the pills the last couple days. He’d have to get back on the regimen.

“Who’s here?” he whispered. He couldn’t imagine who Eastman might have allowed into their orbit.

“It’s King.”

Castle grunted and got his legs out from under Kate, managed not to disturb her as he slid out of the bed. He tugged the blankets up to her chin and smoothed the hair back from her face, lightly kissed her temple.

While he could get away with it, he was going to. As much tenderness and care as he could pour into her, he would. However long he could. 

After that startling moment in his debrief with Eastman when she’d jolted straight up and uttered, so horrified, moving in?, Castle knew that this magic time was coming to a close.

“King say what he wanted?”

“Wants to see you,” Eastman shrugged.

Castle rolled his eyes, gestured to the chair in invitation. Carrie was coming in the morning - soon now - but Eastman had agreed to sit watch with him, maintain the perimeter. Eastman sank into the chair and pulled out his phone, started to work while Castle moved for the door.

King was waiting right outside, hands in the pockets of his bland Dockers, a light jacket on over his Brooks Brothers oxford. For a moment, the overhead light glared on the lenses of his glasses and he looked like a strange, lost professor.

And then King stepped into Castle and gave him a brief embrace, a tight movement that reminded him awkwardly of Jim Beckett. 

“Rick. How is she?”

“We’re working on pain management,” Castle nodded, swallowing. King squeezed his shoulder, even though his grip barely made a dent. “The bullet went through, shattering both bones in her forearm. The surgeon says he’ll go back in and remove the screws and the plate in four weeks.”

“Ouch, screws and a plate. And she was shot at close range, I heard.”

“Yeah,” he gruffed, glancing down at his shoes. He felt sick in his guts, like it was his fault, and he realized he kinda thought it was. “I feel like I did this to her.”

“Because you weren’t you there to help?”

“Because-” He scraped his hand through his hair, tugged on it in frustration. “Because I pushed her there. I did this.”

“You?” Dr King clasped his hands in front of him. “You pushed her to this? Interesting. I always got the feeling that Kate Beckett didn’t let anyone push her around.”

Castle opened his mouth, blinked, closed it.

“In fact, I bet Kate would take offense at the idea that you think you’re such a major force in her life.”

Fuck. “She would. But I saw - I can see now, how it’s hurt her, how I’ve - abandoned her.”

“Ah, is that the case? You’ve abandoned her.”

His face contorted, trying to keep it under control. “I did. I do. I keep leaving.”

“Do you feel that Mark abandons his wife?”

Just alluding to Kate in the same construct to Eastman and his wife made Castle’s insides turn out. His wife.

“No,” he said. “No, Mark doesn’t abandon her. It’s - that’s different.”

“Why’s it different?”

“Are you therapy-ing me?”

King chuckled, leaned back against the wall outside Kate’s room. “Most definitely. This is a traumatic event. I don’t believe you have much in the way of healthy coping mechanisms and I want to help you work through this.”

“Ah.”

“So? Why’s Mark and his wife’s situation any different than yours?”

“I’m not married to her,” he said gravely.

“Wouldn’t that argue in the other direction - that Mark would be more likely to be abandoning Carrie when he leaves all the time? After all, they have vows spoken between them.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “But - well, but Kate... Kate keeps getting left.”

“Kate keeps getting left,” King echoed softly.

Made him hurt, just saying it like that. He clenched his fists and stared off down the hall. “She’s different. Everything about her is different. But her mother was murdered and now her father is - he’s trying but his trying isn’t enough. Trying is useless when she needs someone there for her.”

“She needs someone but Carrie doesn’t?”

Castle growled, his eyes snapping back to King. “What are you saying? That we shouldn’t do our jobs? That being a spy is-”

“No,” King cut in. “No. That is not what I’m saying. I’m suggesting that what makes Katherine so different isn’t her situation or yours, but more the way you feel about her.”

“Well, of course.”

King smirked, shook his head. “Well. Okay. But.”

“But?”

“But Kate is an adult who makes her own choices. She’s an especially independent adult, if I remember correctly, and this... shepherding instinct of yours, while cheering to witness, is going to severely cramp her style.”

“Maybe it needs to be cramped,” he muttered.

“Maybe. Or maybe she needs - more - someone who accentuates her style?”

He frowned.

“Too many metaphors, I suppose,” King smiled. “I’d suggest listening.”

“Listening.”

“To what Kate has to say. What she wants. Listen to her first, ears open, no judgments. Listen, because she’s telling you what she needs, even if it’s not what she wants.”

What she needed. “Okay.” What she wanted versus what she needed. “She needs to not get shot.”

“Well, there’s a good goal,” King chuckled. “Anything you need from me?”

“I... probably need a lot from you,” he sighed.

King patted his shoulder. “Well, where it doesn’t interfere with what Kate might ask of me, I’m here for you. For you both.”

“Uh. Thanks,” he muttered. It was somehow embarrassing to be having this conversation outside her room. “Actually. I... maybe we could find an empty room and - and talk? I just - I need to ask you about something.”

“Oh?” King said, looking mildly wary.

“About a certain program of my father’s.”

“Oh.” King’s face shut down, perfectly, cleanly shut down. “Which program?”

“The Army, about five years ago.”

King nodded slowly. “I see. Well. As you said, let’s find an empty room for this.” He gestured for Castle to go ahead of him. “Also, just to let you know? Your father has it in mind that he’ll be surprising you later.”

“Surprising me,” Castle winced.

“Here. With her.”

“Fuck,” he whispered. “How later?”

“Sounded like tomorrow.”

“Thank you for the warning,” he sighed. He was going to have to do something about it.

\-----

“Kate? Beckett, I need you to wake for a second.”

She did. She was surprised because she felt world-tilted, as if the wrong things were in focus. When she opened her eyes, Eastman was leaning in close from the chair.

“Castle okay?” she husked. They were alone.

“He’s talking with King.”

“Oh.”

“I need you with me for a second - are you awake?”

“Sorta,” she admitted, licking her lips.

“I know it’s late, but we have a problem.”

She opened her eyes, pushed off with her right arm to sit up straighter. “What problem. What’s the problem.” She blinked hard, trying to see Eastman correctly.

“Your boss.”

“My. Boss?” Was he talking about Castle? “I don’t-”

“Captain Montgomery-”

“Oh,” she gasped, surprised, hilarity bubbling up. “My boss. Right.”

“I didn’t tell Castle this, but he’s bringing IAB in tomorrow morning, bright and early.”

“Shit.” She rubbed her hand down her face. “Right. Well, I went after a drug dealer on my own time and got shot.”

“Did you fire your weapon?”

She thought back. “No.”

“It was the gun Castle gave you, correct?”

“Yes,” she got out. That beautiful gun. She adored that weapon. “I - guess it’s gone-”

“No, I recovered it. It’s back inside your apartment - in the safe. Is that where you keep it?”

She grunted. In her safe. Eastman knew the combination to her safe - or else had safe-cracked it. Fuck. Castle had probably told him and she had really thought she’d been better than that. “No, I usually keep it in a box on my dresser, but the safe is good. While I’m not there.”

“Don’t mention the gun.”

“To IAB,” she said slowly. She wished she could take notes; she felt disjointed, at odds. Castle wasn’t here and her mind kept reaching out past the boundaries, searching for him with some idea that touching his hand or making eye contact would help. 

The lidocaine had been injected into her arm again, sometime during the early night hours, but there’d been an IV of drugs too. She thought. She couldn’t remember for sure. There’d been some kind of conferencing going on too, Eastman talking about-

“Kate.”

She blinked, glanced up at Mark. “No gun. I’m not comfortable lying to IAB. This is my job-”

“Castle bought you that gun.”

She closed her mouth, took a long breath.

“I’m sorry,” Eastman said quietly.

She shook her head. “Right. No gun on me. And Royce?”

“Had a hunch you were working a case; he followed with his licensed and registered fire arm.”

“Of course,” she whispered.

“You thought to confront Vulcan Simmons, put some pressure on him. You thought he’d make a move one way or another if you did.”

“I - did,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

“No? Well, then that’s even better. It’s the truth. So he held you at gunpoint with his own weapon. That sounds plausible.” He said it like it didn’t sound plausible at all.

She swallowed and leaned her head back against the raised hospital bed. She was tired of being raised all the time; she wished she could lie flat, curl up on her side, let her eyes close.

“If I take my gun and I shoot the man who brutally murdered my mother, then I’m no better. I’m exactly like him. All that murder accomplishes is more lives ruined. Mine especially. I’m not interested in revenge. I want justice.”

“Yes,” he said softly. It made her eyes jerk to his; he offered her a tired and weary smile that cut. “But Castle and I may be some of the few people who would say justice is often only served through vengeance.”

“I’m not one of those people,” she husked. She wasn’t. Violence wasn’t - as much as Castle’s raw power attracted her, as much as his sheer aggressive maleness made her do stupid things for him, it wasn’t the violence that got her off.

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” Eastman quoted quietly. His eyes were steady. “And often the Lord needs some earthly help. That’s what we are.”

“It’s not a judgment of you, or him, but me. I can’t do that. Not because I’m some morally superior creature, but because I can’t handle it. I can’t go that route or I will - I will never come back.”

Eastman rubbed his forefinger on his jaw, propped his chin on his hand. “There was a time, Kate, when I didn’t think Castle could come back either. When I thought that man didn’t have it in him to surface. To breathe cleanly.”

“What are you saying? Are you trying to warn me off Castle?”

“No, quite the opposite. I’m saying you just may be that incredibly rare, morally superior creature, Kate Beckett. And thank God for you, because you’ve infected him. And I thought his father had crushed every last good thing out of him.”

She sucked in a breath, eyes stinging, blurring, running over.

She didn’t even know why.

But Rick. Rick. What had he told her? His mother had never come back for him, but his father had sent a driver and the car had taken him to a training facility and he had never looked back.

“I’m tired,” she croaked, rubbing her good hand under her eye. “I’m tired.”

“I’ll let you sleep. You know what to say to IAB?”

“I know that to say.”

She curled up and turned over, putting her back to the door. She was cold, and the blankets didn’t help.

Only Castle helped. And she couldn’t - she couldn’t.

It couldn’t be this.

\-----

Castle ushered King back inside, shrugging. “I’m sure she won’t mind - if she’s awake. She’s slept a lot lately.”

King followed him to her bedside; Eastman stood easily and offered a hand to shake and the two greeted each other while Castle moved to the head of the bed.

She had turned in her sleep, drawn up tightly. He hoped she was warm enough; it was drafty in this room even despite its windowlessness, and her fingers were always chilled.

“Kate?” he murmured. He didn’t want to her disturb her if-

Her eyes opened, desolate brown. His breath caught and he hunched in over her, blocking her from view, his body bowed until his forehead came to hers.

“What’s wrong? Kate, love, does it hurt?”

“It hurts,” she murmured, eyes closing. 

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, stroking the hair back from her temple, a touch of a kiss to her cheek. “I’ll tell King to leave. And Mark - he can wait outside the door if you want to be alone-”

“King is here?” She was struggling to push up past him, to turn over, so he lifted once more, watched her like a hawk.

She wasn’t wincing; there was no stiffness to the movement of her arm. He stepped back, still not liking the depths to her eyes, and he gestured to King. “Dr King came by to check on you.”

Kate sat up against the bed, offered King a rather weak smile and her hand. King leaned in and squeezed, keeping his grip tight a moment longer than most might.

“How do you feel, Kate?”

“Um.” Her eyes roved to his. “Okay, actually.”

“You do?” Castle blurted out, a relieved grin stealing over his face. “Good. I was afraid the meds weren’t working.”

“Did I get something else?” she asked. She wasn’t exactly looking at him.

“Yeah, a different drug - same family as the lidocaine, so it’s not a narcotic. It’s working?”

She nodded, and her eyes trailed to Eastman and then back to King. Castle gave his partner a look and he nodded for the door.

Shit.

Fine. Castle reached out and gripped Kate’s elbow, the good arm, and leaned in to kiss the corner of her mouth. She had a little held-breath gasp and her cheek bumped his, and he felt better about leaving her. She apparently was feeling all right enough.

“Gonna conference with Eastman,” he murmured. “We’ll be right outside.”

“You don’t have to hover over me,” she grit out.

He grinned. “You really are feeling better.”

“Shut up.”

His puny little heart soared. Fuck, she just - even bristling at him and avoiding his eyes, she made him feel a thousand times better.

He squeezed her elbow and released her, thought better of endearments or another kiss right now. He just followed Eastman out into the hall and left Kate with King.

Mark leaned back against the door for a moment, shut his eyes, and Castle felt a flicker of dread.

“What’s going on?”

Eastman rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, the only tell Castle had ever seen on the man - it looked quite a lot like his father’s tell. It was the one Eastman had when he was going to deliver bad news.

“Mark,” he gritted out.

Eastman held up both hands. “IAB is coming in tomorrow.”

“Shit, no,” he moaned. “So is my father.”

“Your father?” Eastman yelped, standing up straight. “Oh, no. No. That is not good. They cannot be here together at the same time.”

“If IAB is coming, that’s why he’s coming too,” Castle said grimly. “She probably can’t keep ducking them either. Only so long the pain meds excuse is gonna last.”

“I arranged for them to be here,” Eastman admitted.

Castle shot him a look but that was Eastman. He had his own damn timetable for things and wouldn’t be swayed. “Okay. Fine.”

“But Black...”

“Can we divert him? Or them? They can’t both be here.”

“Let me work on it. I’ll come up with something.”

Castle let out a breath, nodded, but his eyes went back to the little window set in the door. King was talking earnestly to Beckett; he should probably wait out here. “Can I help?”

“You can stand to be away from her?”

He cut his eyes back to Eastman, but the man wasn’t messing with him.

“I can. Her pain is under control, she said.” He frowned. “But she didn’t look so great when she woke.”

“I might have upset her,” Eastman answered.

“You - did?”

“I was telling her about IAB. And the gun.”

The gun. “Oh, fuck. The one I bought for her. Damn it. She’s - she won’t lie to IAB-”

“She will,” Eastman said quickly. “I didn’t even have to spell it out for her. She understood.”

“She’s lying for me.”

“And herself.”  
“She’s going to look very stupid going into a drug dealer’s den with no weapon.”

“She also looks clean.”

Fuck. No wonder she’d looked at him like that.

“We had a conversation,” Eastman continued. “It was favorable.”

“I don’t want her sabotaging her career just because I’m a spy.”

Eastman gave a slight smile. “I meant, she came across favorably.”

“Is that your archaic way of saying you like her?”

“Could be.”

Castle rolled his eyes. But he didn’t like that she was doing this for him. Lying for him. So many lies already, all the ways she’d had to maneuver around her job just to accommodate him. Those diamonds from the gambling ring, the thing in Brighton Beach, the dead service agent, the plane he’d flown, his showing up half-dead in her apartment, Foley.

“Okay, I like her. Seal of approval, Rick. And Carrie likes her too.”

It actually meant something.

\-----


	9. Chapter 9

After King left, Beckett laid in the semi-darkness and stared up at the ceiling tiles, alone. For the first time in hours, nearly two days, she was alone in the hospital, no one hovering, no one holding her hand, the bed all to herself.

It was lonesome.

She plucked at the blanket at her hip and took a breath, tried to reclaim herself.

But she didn't feel unclaimed. She felt like Kate Beckett, freshly-made Homicide detective, little more reckless than she should have been, her usual self. She had made a mistake thinking she could handle Vulcan Simmons alone - thinking that she was emotionally prepared to face the man who had ordered the hit - and as a result, he had slipped the net.

She was actually considering asking her spy to find him for her. But with IAB tomorrow and the real consequences to her job looming large, she didn't know how that would ever play. Like Eastman had said - they were avenging angels, not agents of justice.

She couldn't use her spy for this. She was alone in it, and it was better that way. Too risky to think like Castle did, too close to the line for her to handle.

She wanted to get out of here. She wasn't up to IAB tomorrow, though she'd have to be. And-

The door came open and Castle walked through, prowling in his way, his eyes sweeping the room as they always did - ever-alert, ever-ready. He came straight to her bedside and clamped his hands on the side rail, started unhooking it.

"We're moving you to a different room."

"What?" she startled.

"A room with some fucking windows," he said, completely dispassionately. 

"Castle," she sighed. "I don't need special treatment."

"It's not special. It's for your security."

She took a sharp breath, searched out his eyes for the answer. "My security."

"Vulcan Simmons hasn't been caught. I'm not taking that risk-"

"Richard," she growled. "This is my life. I'll have to go back to the job, do my job - out there, on the streets."

"We'll tackle that one in about eight weeks, Beckett. For right now, we're moving rooms. Juts a few floors down."

"Castle," she started, but had to stop, hearing the whine in her voice.

"Come on, Beckett. Up and at 'em."

"You're a fucking bully."

"There's a window and the bed is bigger."

"Bigger?" she murmured, eyes catching his. 

"Yeah, come on. Let's go. I'll take the IV pole. You can walk, can't you?"

"This is ridiculous. Castle. Vulcan Simmons has gone to ground. He's hiding like the damn blustering coward that he is. He hired someone. A professional, just like you said. You really think a hired killer is going to be deterred by a room change?"

"Have a heart, Beckett. Patronize me, will ya?"

She scowled at him, but Castle leaned in close and got his arm under her neck like he was going to carry her. She grunted and slapped his shoulder with her good hand, tried to shove him off.

He was so fucking hard. His whole body was like steel. How had she forgotten just how fucking intensely hot he was - and how much she craved him?

"Castle," she gasped. "Castle. I - I'll make you a deal."

"What?" he husked. His face was so close to hers that she felt his breath against her lips.

"I'll walk down to my new room if - if you stay with me."

"Of course," he said immediately. "You have me. I'm there."

"No Eastman," she went on, lifting her hand to his cheek and scraping her thumb across his scruff. "No one but you and me in that bed. That bigger bed."

He froze. She could see the white around his eyes and how his mouth shaped some kind of response but it never got out of his fast-swallowing throat.

Kate drifted a hand to his hip and skimmed between them, brushed her knuckles against him.

Castle let out a long, slow breath and dropped his forehead to hers. "Fuck. Kate."

"Yes," she hummed. "Let's put those two words together, shall we?"

"I..."

"You. Me. Those beautiful, talented fingers of yours, my-"

"Okay," he scraped out. "Okay, you win. It's a deal."

"Oh, I promise. We both win."

\-----

The bed really was bigger.

She made him help her strip off the sweatshirt, leaving her bare, and then she leaned back and lifted her feet to him. He took the hint without any prompting, tugging the yoga pants off her legs in an entirely efficient manner. 

He was devouring her with only his eyes. She felt him like a hit to her veins, a rush.

She moved to reach for him, but he caught her wrists, both of them, being easy and gentle with her injured arm. He brought her hands over her head, bearing down into her body so that she felt him over her. Held away but still so very close, the brush of his shirt against her bare breasts the most erotic thing she'd ever felt.

"Keep 'em up," he husked.

"Yes, sir," she whispered, lips twisting as she stared up at him. 

"I'm serious, Beckett. I'll leave you right now-"

"You promised-"

"-and get some damn velcro safety restraints if you move those hands."

"Oh?" she murmured.

His hips thrust down into her spread thighs and she moaned. 

"You really want me to leave?" he intoned, dark and dangerous at her ear.

"Oh no," she gasped. "I'll be good."

"You'd better."

"You're going to fuck me?" she murmured, shifting her legs wider to press against his hip bone. "Not just your fingers but your cock-"

"Fingers are never enough for you," he growled. His teeth nipped her jaw and she arched, pressing her whole body against his. He dropped down on top of her at her invitation, and she moaned again, feeling it in her bones, that wonderful terrible ache.

"Fingers are never never enough of you," she whispered. Her lips dusted his jaw, nuzzled under at his neck until she got her mouth on his throat and suckled.

"Fuck, you feel good," he sighed.

"I so needed this."

"Damn, Kate, you have no idea how much - how much I missed you. How you feel under me, the sounds you make, baby."

She lifted her mouth to his and touched his tongue, stroked inside for the heat of him, the voracious hunger that opened up when they met. His fingers came away from her wrists and stroked down the inside of her arm, came down to her face, holding her by her jaw. He broke from the kiss and painted her cheek with his lips, down to her neck, falling to her collarbones.

Poised on one elbow above her, he shifted his other hand flat down her chest, pressing against her breast, her ribs, making a straight line for her hip and under her panties. She moaned and arched for him, giving him space, and his fingers pressed her open.

"Oh, yes. I missed you too," she moaned. He teased, making her hips come up. He stroked and swirled, rubbed her folds until she was soaked with arousal, burning and tight with need. Her sex contracted like a mouth, eager, empty, wanting. She felt her womb clutching for him, her body seeking to draw him inside, eager to press up against him.

His mouth landed over her breast and his tongue danced at her nipple. She cried out, a hand coming down to clutch the back of his neck, hanging on to him. He growled into the bite at her breast, made her moan some dark desire, made her hips buck and plunge for wanting him.

"I need to make you come," he growled. "I want to see you - feel you - falling apart under me. I ached when we were apart, ached to touch you here, push my fingers inside you."

"I want you," she moaned. "Fingers later. Cock now. Now, Castle-"

"No," he gruffed. "This first." His body was unrelenting on top of her, pressing her down; his mouth came up to hers and his tongue forced its way inside. She was desperate, a black hole of need; she had to have him.

"Castle, Rick. Rick, please-"

"I'm going to stretch you first," he husked.

She gasped when three fingers pushed inside her, coming up hard in the bed and crashing into him, her body writhing with it. He whispered praise in her ear and pumped his fingers deeper, made her legs tremble, her hand grip his neck, her breath too fast.

She felt ripped open, bones broken apart for him.

Castle pushed a fourth finger in without waiting, and she cried out. He muffled her noise with his mouth, his body laying over hers, her breasts crushed to his chest. 

He pumped his hand deeper and the webbing of his thumb hit her clit, sent her spiraling and dizzy off the edge of her climax, her cunt gripping his fingers, wringing out every last contraction until she was exhausted with it.

Castle withdrew two fingers, but he stayed lightly stroking inside her, his other two curling and petting the walls of her cunt. She whimpered and hooked her arm at his neck, tried to catch her breath.

"You still have your fucking clothes on," she growled.

"But my jeans are unzipped. Just for you, sweetheart. Since you've already broken my rule and moved your arm, why don't you reach in and take me out?"

She choked on her breath and gripped his neck, hard, her forehead crashing into his. "Yes. Please. I-"

"No need to beg, baby. Just do it."

She whined, slid her hand down his chest to hard bones of his pelvis. He shifted for her and she found his open fly, pressed her fingers against the soft jersey of his boxer briefs.

He was so fucking hard. Oh, hell. He was right to stretch her; he was so damn big already and that was in the cage of his pants.

"Oh, fuck me," she rasped.

"That's the idea."

She really wanted to fuck that smirk right off his face, but she was pretty sure he was still in control here. 

She didn't even care.

\-----

“You’re so thick,” she whispered. Their mouths were close, lips glancing, breath fast. She felt like the whole world was heavy in her palm, heavy over her body, and a quick thrust was all it would take.

“Kate, Kate,” he chanted at her mouth. 

Her chest expanded and seemed to burst open. She wanted him so much. She could cry with how good this was, how it filled up everything and he hadn’t even pushed inside her yet.

“Sit up,” she husked. “I wanna sit up. Castle, Castle-”

“You gotta - fuck - you gotta let go of me so I can fucking think, Beckett.”

She shivered and released his cock, felt his body falling into hers like relief. She tightened her arm around his neck, her injured one still over her head, but she wanted up - upright for this, the way they moved when they were so close together.

“Okay, okay,” he grunted. Another groan from his mouth came with his movement; he rocked them to his shoulder and then she felt his knee drag up and plant in the mattress.

She gasped when the cold air hit her back, but she slid her leg around his hip and straddled his lap, pressing close. Her breasts touched his shirt, the warm cotton against her nipples, and she hooked her ankles in the small of his back.

His jeans were rough under her thighs. She rubbed her cheek to his beard and shivered hard.

“You okay?” he husked. “You cold?”

“Little bit,” she whispered. His arms came around her, tightly, his embrace overwhelming. She breathed deeply, felt the tantalizing friction of her nipples against his shirt, his hard chest below.

She felt the blanket dragging up her spine and then he was settling it over her shoulders, tucking it in close with a fist in the corners. She tilted her head down and pressed her nose into his neck, nipped the straining muscle there and licked after her bite.

“Fuck, Kate, feels so good like this. So close. So hot in my arms.”

“I want you,” she whispered, dipping her head down. She thought she’d be able to see them, her bare and exposed sex and his massive cock poled out of his pants, but it was darkness. Deep black and the awareness of something amazing happening below the surface.

“I want to have you,” he husked.

“Let me find you,” she murmured, fingers traveling from his ribs to the hem of his shirt and dusting his bare stomach. He flinched and jerked against her, but it made his cock bob towards her thigh, telling on him.

She closed her hand around him again and they both moaned, breathless, straining sounds.

“Should I play with you a little or do you-”

“No, just - let me inside, Kate. Enough playing.”

She hummed and shifted her weight forward, squeezing his hips with her thighs for leverage. He groaned and sucked at her neck, at that place below her ear, making her pulse thump, a little frantic now.

She gripped his cock and angled him towards her sex, knowing instinctively just what it would take. Practice, so much practice, and that natural and instant connection that had him like a compass arrow to her true north.

“Here you go,” she whispered. The head of his cock touched her wetness and he whimpered, his arm crushing her shoulders, trying to get her closer. She held her hips away, held off on giving it to him, shimmied a little so that he passed over her folds.

“Kate, Kate, please, please-”

She sank down and his cock penetrated her cunt, slowly, wet velvet and the steel of his erection finding her slight resistance.

“Oh, fuck, sweetheart,” he sighed at her ear. His kiss dragged and he groaned again as he pushed inside her, higher, tighter. “Oh, love. Oh, God. Kate. Kate.”

“How I’ve missed you,” she whispered at his jaw. Her teeth caught his beard and tugged, her body so full that she couldn’t breathe. She had to wriggle her hips to take more of him and he moaned her name, his fingers tightening at the back of her neck.

Suddenly he thrust up sharply and she cried out, her breasts raw against his shirt, her inner thighs scraped by his jeans. He growled and gritted his teeth, holding her tightly, seated deep inside her.

It was perfect. It was everything. He was the only thing she ever needed.

“You really miss me when I’m away?” he rasped. “Do you really-”

“So much,” she mewled. “I miss you so much. Don’t go. Stay, stay-”

“Right here,” he croaked. “Won’t move. Won’t go anywhere. Come around me, Kate. I know you need it.”

She groaned, impaled on his cock buried so deeply in her, stretched and filled. He was so big, so thick, she could feel every pulsing beat of his heart between her legs.

“Come for me, love. Come for me so I can feel how much you missed me.”

She cried out, tears pushing out of her eyes and sliding down her cheeks, and then his mouth was there, sucking softly at each drop, while his hands came to her breasts and kneaded. Her nipples flared with bright painful pleasure and she moaned into his mouth, head dropping back, his teeth catching too hard at her lip as she broke away and-

She orgasmed on her arch, a long, slow, building thing that crashed over her.

Castle clamped his hands on her hips and began to ride her on top of him, controlling her descent, making it burn, making the climax plateau and hold there, infinitely terribly beautiful.

Castle growled love into her breasts and she screamed, came again around his thrusting cock even as his own orgasm burst out of his body and soaked them both in cascading delicious aftershocks.

\-----

It was hard to breathe sometimes after. Sometimes it just - grabbed him like that. 

She said everything with her body. She gave up her secrets to him with the way she moved, the coil of her body, the catch of her breath. How could she not? So much inside Kate wanted out, wanted outlet, and sex was her siphon.

Which meant he got all of it. Everything. She poured her soul into him when they made love, and it was love, of course. It was love.

Castle took in a breath, finally, and brought his hand to her face, touching her, framing her. Kate’s lips parted, and she opened her eyes, her love staring back at him.

He had never needed the words; never. He needed only her body and all it spoke.

“Hey,” she whispered.

He stroked the hair away from her temple, teasing it from where it had caught in her eyelashes, and he touched his lips to hers.

“Hey,” he murmured. He lifted his other hand, found her injured arm loose around him and brought it inward, cradled it between their bodies. Still upright, though swaying, drugged with sex. 

She leaned in and laid her cheek against his shoulder, her arm trapped between them. He stroked his fingers down the bare ridge of her spine, saw his own hand moving under the blanket.

“You cold?”

“Not with you.”

He tightened his arm around her waist and nudged his nose down into her neck, lips catching on her damp skin. love you, love you, Kate Beckett.

She shivered and sighed down into him, her heels at his back still. 

“It’s kinda wrong that I’m still wearing clothes,” he grumbled.

She laughed, lifting her head from his shoulder to glance at him. Her lips were pink and flushed, swollen with arousal, but her eyes were drooping like she’d fall asleep any moment.

“It’s late,” he whispered. “And IAB is coming in the morning.”

“I wanna come in the morning,” she sighed.

Castle laughed, felt like they were trading amusement back and forth. She shifted in his lap and he grunted, feeling her body around his half-hard cock. Her hum was electric, and her nakedness was making him rise inside her.

“That’s more like it,” she murmured.

He trailed his fingers over her ribs, the blanket shifting at the backs of his hands and her heated skin at the tips of his touch. Electric, crazy, intense, all-consuming. What he felt for her was being transmitted through his very skin, and he felt her body translate it and give it back, word for word, touch for touch.

“Again?” he asked.

“Of course,” she sighed. “Though let’s get you undressed, Rick. Skin to skin.”

“Mm, yeah.” He lost words when he touched her anyway, when he had her in his arms. No need to speak his love when the very basic of language failed him at the feeling of her.

The feeling of her.

“Should I do it? Or are you gonna get moving?”

He grinned, nipped her bottom lip for sassing him, and then he pushed her away, sighing as his cock left her body. He laid her back on the hospital bed, her legs splayed over his thighs, their sexes glistening. The soft cast was a pale slash in the darkness, but he lifted up and reached for the hem of his t-shirt, giving her a daring look.

She laughed, arm positioned carefully over her head, somehow both seductive and terribly heartbreaking. Abandoning his shirt, he gripped her by her spread knees, massaged the thick bands of muscle where they wrapped her thighs. Kate arched, lashes fluttering.

He leaned in and planted his fists at either side of her in the mattress, kissing her chin, her jaw, up along the sharpest angle to her cheekbone, hovering over her closing eyelid.

She let out a plaintive little sigh. “Clothes. Off.”

He chuckled and drew back, hands dragging down her legs. He moved to tug the t-shirt over his head and dropped it off the side of the bed. She had opened her eyes just in time and she licked her bottom lip seeing him, reached out with her good hand to scratch her nails at his jean-clad thigh.

Bare-chested, he waited on her, knowing that she wanted something from him, that he had to be patient.

Her throat worked as her chin lifted. “Take off your jeans?”

Was it a question? He only nodded and shifted back, dislodging her legs as he worked the jeans off his hips. One of her feet dangled off the bed, the other she dragged up under her ass, knee raised, her sex on display for him.

Though it didn’t look like display. She looked eager, yes, but that wasn’t quite it. The question in her voice had transferred to a question in her body, a hesitation he didn’t understand.

He dumped his jeans over the side of the bed, his boxers to follow, and her eyes sailed down his body, hungry.

The drugs, maybe. Or else she just wasn’t confident with her arm in a cast.

He’d show her, he’d tell her everything she needed to hear with his own mouth.

No words needed.

Castle laid his hands on her spread thighs, pressed his thumbs into her skin. She groaned, lashes closing, and Castle leaned in over her, hovering at her sex.

“Kate.”

She moaned.

“Kate Beckett, look at me.”

Her eyes flickered and finally opened, and her teeth caught her bottom lip. She looked somehow insecure, and he hated that. Never with him. Let her never ever doubt him.

He dipped his head and pressed his lips to her belly; she flinched and shivered, her knees coming in as if to capture him. He pressed her thighs wider and settled in, shoulders nudging her apart.

“Rick,” she moaned.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. She sighed and he touched his tongue to her stomach.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh.”

“Mmm, Kate, love, so very beautiful.” He dragged his mouth across the line of her waist to her hipbone and she twitched, her fingers coming to the top of his head, resting there, like a guide.

“Castle, I-”

“I know,” he murmured. His teeth scraped her pelvis and he nudged his nose at her furred sex, bringing a hand in to touch her.

“Rick,” she gasped.

He spread her sex with his fingers, darted his tongue to taste her.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I can’t. I can’t-”

“I can,” he hummed. She arched against the vibration of his voice and he placed his mouth on her, meeting the rise of her hips with his kiss.

“Rick. Rick, I need - you. I need you-”

He hummed again and stroked his tongue deeper into her folds, curling up to her clit. She was restless and jumpy tonight, but her fingers dragged down through his hair and pianoed at his forehead, his temples, back and forth, stroking, caressing.

He took her lead and slid his tongue along her folds in just the same way. She moaned and writhed, her body pushing for more. He dragged a thumb through her wet heat and pushed inside her.

Kate gasped, the buck of her hips so sharp that it brought his head up. His eyes met hers, sharp and desperate, and he didn’t know if that was all it was - her needing him - or if it was a need that went deeper.

She’d never accept it, what he wanted to offer her; she’d never let him.

But this.

Castle withdrew his thumb and stroked up and around her clit, came back to her with two fingers instead. 

Kate cried out, her orgasm clenching around his fingers, her knees pressing in at his shoulders, her chin angled sharply so that he couldn’t see her eyes any longer.

Castle came up her body, working his fingers deeper inside her as she still contracted. Kate moaned, her legs twining around his hips, dragging herself closer and him down.

He lowered his mouth to hers and swallowed her moans, stroking inside in mimic of his fingers. She dropped her hand to his shoulder, his back, gripped his hip as she fell apart underneath him.

He sucked on her tongue and pulled back, watched the last of it shiver over her face and burst in her eyes.

Her mouth was open, her lips so red in the darkness. She sucked in a breath that seemed to catch in her chest, and Castle stroked his arousal-wet fingers over those rose lips.

“Rick,” she murmured. Tears were in the corners of her eyes, unshed, held back. “I want you - you - I need to have you.”

Castle groaned and dropped his forehead to hers, breaths mingling. Her hand drifted, burning like fire over his flank, dipping inside to his heavy erection. She moaned, but she didn’t take him; instead she traced her fingers over the heat of him.

“Kate, I can’t wait,” he husked. 

“Never wait. Take-”

He angled her knee away and thrust inside her.

\-----


	10. Chapter 10

“Fuck,” he whispered.

Her hand gripped his ass, her mouth open at his neck, teeth sharp. But, holy hell, her body. So fucking tight, so good, so hot.

“Kate,” he groaned.

She bumped up into him and he sank further inside her, cursing as her sex gripped him, so damn tight. He wasn’t sure he could do it. He was going to fucking come apart if he moved at all.

“Kate,” he whispered. “Please. Please-”

She shifted under him, fingers digging hard in his ass so that the pinch of her nails brought his mouth crashing down to find hers. She moaned around his tongue, her body driving upwards and upwards like she was trying to get him deeper.

He couldn’t go deeper. He couldn’t fucking go at all. He might explode without a single stroke, and that just wasn’t fucking okay. He’d already had an orgasm inside her and he should be better than this.

“Castle,” she moaned.

He broke from her mouth and reared up, staring down at her. She was wild and mussed and her eyes had a smudged look; she was on fucking pain medication and he was rutting in her like a damn animal.

“Where you going?” she growled, snagging the back of his neck and forcing his mouth back down to hers. He groaned into her savagery, adoring the way she stroked with her tongue, the fierce possession of her mouth.

Her kiss was rough, a raw thing; she kissed like she’d thought of it all by herself, this new thing with her mouth and tongue and lips. She was strong for a woman on pain meds - holy fuck, she was strong - and he loved how she took from him.

He gave it, distracted enough by the way she made out with him for his cock to settle, to grow accustomed to the heat and the grip of her after so long without.

She wrenched from his mouth and lay panting below him, chest heaving so deeply that her nipples chafed at his own. He palmed one of her breasts and kneaded the flesh, watching her eyes roll back as she relished his touch. Castle lowered his mouth to her neck, sucked a line of insistent kisses down to the breast in his hand.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

She still wasn’t cursing at him. Still unraveled by having him, his having her, that she was bare before him. Sometimes he loved it, how he could drive himself right inside her most vulnerable heart and make her feel him everywhere. But this, tonight, felt too fragile, too close to breaking.

He couldn’t break her. He had to draw her together, give her what she needed to bind her heart up. Even if it meant it was against him.

She had a long recovery ahead, made worse by the fact that the whole thing related to her mother’s case.

Castle sighed at her breast and touched his tongue to her nipple. She whimpered and arched, offering herself, and he took.

He sucked her breast into his mouth and laved her nipple with his tongue, dragging the beaded peak against his teeth, making her cry out. He went easier on her, not wanting to unmake her, not like this, but he thought he could move now.

She gasped when he thrust.

Her body began to thrum, trembling against his, her hips clashing, her rhythm missing his. He withdrew and she chased after him; he stroked and she went still. Didn’t matter, the out of sync, because it was still so damn good.

“Rick, please,” she husked over his head. He lifted his mouth from her breast and came back to her kiss, tasting her tongue. It was like magic, and she settled into a rhythm, meeting him for every stroke, drawing his thrusts down into her body.

Her fingers released his ass, trusting his body to find hers finally, and her hand trailed up his side and around to his face.

He sucked in a startled breath and opened his eyes to her. She was staring up at him like he was a ghost, a revelation, a long-asked-for gift.

The arm he was using to prop himself up began to tremble, his gaze caught by hers. He lowered himself down to his shoulder, his neck against her upper arm, the soft cast bumping the back of his head as she curled around him.

He touched his mouth to hers, dusting a kiss. She came in and did the same, giving it right back. His body slowed, his thrusts shorter, lying side by side like this, a sharper angle, her right leg thrown over his hip and pulling him home.

They rocked into each other, hips rolling, breath tight and sudden when it came at all. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from hers; she kept touching her kiss to his cheeks and chin and nose. He kissed her where she landed, wound his fingers in her hair at the nape of her neck.

Her breasts rubbed against him, her body rubbed against him. Their sex became languid, drawn out; he could make love to her like this for hours.

She sucked in a breath and tightened around him; her lashes dropped, shutting off her eyes from his.

“Kate,” he demanded.

She opened her eyes.

“Don’t let go,” he husked, not sure what he asked, only that he had to see her, she had to see him.

He thrust and she mewled, the corners of her eyes pinching, but she kept her gaze on his. He rocked into her again and she fluttered around his cock, the beginnings of her orgasm like little mouths sucking at his cock.

“Kate, baby, oh-”

“Please come. Please come with me,” she whispered.

He gripped her by the back of her neck and bucked his hips into her; she gasped and went rigid, eyes imploring.  
He roared as he climaxed, driving hard and hot inside her, unable to hold it back even as he felt her grasping her own release, her sex liquid heat and amazing.

\-----  
He was talking to her, saying words into her mouth, at her lips, along her cheeks and chin and eyes. She was drifting on a painkiller more potent than heavy narcotics, more brilliant and wonderful.

Kate opened her eyes finally and saw the relief spill across his face. He kissed her softly and cupped her cheek; she nuzzled her nose into his palm and bit the venus rise of his thumb.

“Hey,” she husked, able to speak again.

“Hey,” he smiled. His mouth was beautiful. Those fine lips and the cleft of his chin that made that perfect, full bottom lip. The corners tilted, like he was one quirk away from a grin, but mostly it was the whole effect on his face. The way his mouth transformed him, made his smile something illuminating, enveloping his whole countenance.

His eyes crinkled when he smiled. She didn’t know why that was so damn beautiful, but his smile touched her heart and eased her shoulders and she didn’t mind saying it. Wasn’t weak to say she liked seeing him happy.

Oh, hell, she loved seeing him happy.

Her intense, beautiful spy.

She brought her good arm up and laid her hand at his chest, tapped her fingers at his skin. “Much as I hate to say this,” she murmured. 

“Then don’t,” he sighed, eyes closing.

She felt like a sting, a slice up into her ribs. She sucked in a breath and dipped her forehead to his chin, drawing her arm into her chest to press it back.

She hadn’t been - she wouldn’t have said something mean. Just - they were in a very not-private hospital. That wasn’t nasty, was it? She wouldn’t have ruined things. Not after that. Did he think she usually-

“I don’t want to get dressed,” he murmured. “But you’re right. They’ll come in at any moment.”

Kate let out a quivering breath, closing her eyes. 

Fuck, she was not good.

She was weepy, and she felt it coming, and all this emotionalism was going to get her in trouble.

“Kate?” he whispered.

“Don’t get dressed,” she rasped. Even her voice sounded like she was going to cry. She tried swallowing hard, pushing it back down, but Castle knew her too well.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered, jerking his body away from hers. “I’m lying on your arm. I’m such an asshole.”

“No,” she choked out.

“I’m so sorry, love. Hell, I’m - shit - shit - I’m so sorry. You’re about to cry. Oh, God. Don’t cry. I’m so sorry.”

She bit her lip, gnawing at it to keep back the tears. He was just so damn - so damn good to her, and why did she never trust it? What was wrong with her that she stayed up nights, alone, so certain it was all in her head?

This wasn’t in her fucking head.

Castle was moving fast, trying to shift her back onto the bed, trying to arrange her arm in a position that wouldn’t do her damage, but all she could think about was how lonely it was, how she never wanted to admit how lonely it was, and now he was here, now he was here, and she was fucking laid up.

“Stop,” she croaked.

He froze. He was halfway leaning down to grab his clothes and hers, but he halted the moment she spoke. “Kate?”

“Don’t. Just. Come back up here with me.”

He lifted up from his reach, chest broad and wide and blocking out what little light had come through the seams of the door. She blinked and lifted her good hand, grasped his wrist and came down to tangle in his fingers.

“No clothes. Let them see; I don’t care. Crawl in with me.”

He swayed.

“Just wake me before IAB gets here,” she said, trying to smile.

Castle came crawling back up her body, all little boy sweetness and humility, his nose nudging into hers. “You sure? I keep hurting you-”

“You could never hurt me,” she murmured. “Lie down. I’ll rest my arm on you.”

He let out a sighing breath and softly kissed her.

Oh, this wasn’t in her head. He was hers. 

She’d caught a spy.

\-----

She laid at his side with their bare skins sweat-sticking in the best kind of way. She was tired and not tired at the same time, able to stay awake so long as he kept talking.

"We could get Chinese," he was offering.

"That's always what you miss," she noted, smiling into his shoulder. "You get home and first thing - can we order Chinese?"

"It's good," he defended, a little half-heartedly. "I love how you eat lo mein noodles. A little messy."

She snorted, embarrassment flushing her skin at the thought of him even noticing. "Shit. I can never get the noodles in my damn mouth."

He chuckled, the sound coursing under her like a wave she could ride, strong, tugging. His fingers stroked at her hair where his arm was curled up. "It's humanizing."

"What does that mean?"

"You are usually completely controlled. Even pissed off, every movement is calculated and timed. No wasted energy, no superfluous gestures. Conservation of energy meets absolute grace. You could be a dancer."

She thought she might be blushing. Holy shit. No one saw her like that. No one.

"So - you know - lo mein falling out of your mouth puts you back down here on earth with the rest of us mere mortals."

"Ha," she insisted, lifting her head up to glare at him. "Mere mortals? My ass. You, Mr. Perfect Body and Kung Fu Moves, you are not a mere mortal."

He narrowed his eyes at her, but his fingers dug through her hair to the back of her neck. "Perfect body, huh?"

She slapped his chest, laid her head back down to avoid that smirk in his eyes. "Mm, perfect for me anyway."

"All I really need."

"This - stuff you take," she murmured. She'd wanted to ask for so long, ached to know. As if she at all might understand. "The shots you've got stored in my freezer?"

"Yeah, like - you know - vitamins. Supplements. A whole GNC in one handy injection."

"Oh." She settled her chin on his sternum and dragged the fingers of her injured hand up to the faintly silver line at his neck. It disappeared somewhere around his collarbones, like a poorly executed feint.

His hand drifted from her ass, skittering along her ribs, and finally captured her exploring fingers. He kissed the pads of her prints and laid her hand back down to his chest, so careful of her arm.

"I don't know of anything in GNC that does this," she sighed.

"What?"

Her fingers wriggled under his grip. "Your scars - they just disappear. Even the one at your wrist - the wound I took stitches out of - fades to almost nothing."

"Yeah." He shrugged.

"My arm will never fade," she whispered. "I'll carry those marks. A reminder of how stupid I was, taking on Vulcan Simmons without a plan. But yours just... disappear. Nothing leaves a mark on you."

He jerked like he'd been stung, and she curled her fingers around his as best she could with her limited mobility. She pressed her knee over his thigh and angled herself closer. She didn't know why that had hurt him, only that it had, and she hadn’t meant to do that.

"He says that," Castle muttered. She felt him lift his hand from her fingers and she looked to find him dragging it down his face.

"Who says what?" she whispered, getting an elbow under her. She managed to lift up just enough to kiss the underside of his jaw, dust another kiss back to his ear. "I like the beard."

He let out a gasping kind of breath, like she'd just knocked him sideways, and his arms curled in around her, his body turning into hers. He trapped her broken arm with his own, kept it stable even as he twisted in to meet her, side by side.

"You like the beard," he whispered.

"On my lips," she clarified. "Between my thighs."

"Well, fuck me. It stays."

She laughed, a little shaky, his mouth millimeters from hers, his forehead pressed so hard into her own that it felt like osmosis. "Who says what?" she repeated.

"My father. Black says leave no trace, make no marks that could lead them back to you. But I hate it. I hate being nothing. And now - even things I want to keep, reminders like you have - they're going to fade and be gone."

"What are you talking about?"

"The scar on my wrist is - beautiful. I love it. Reminds me of you."

She went still, heart pausing.

"Stupid, I know," he whispered. There was no space between them and the darkness made it impossible. "I know, but you took care of me even when you shouldn't have. You saved my life. You trusted me, even delirious and dying in your kitchen. And you protected me. No one has ever stood up for me like that. To him."

"What about Mark?" she hushed.

"You kicked Black in the knee and pushed him out of your apartment."

She laughed, but her heart hurt. Her whole chest ached. "Rick-"

"You were protecting me, weren't you?"

"Yes," she sighed.

"I love that scar; I wish it would stay. But nothing stays for me."

Kate uncurled her injured hand and hooked her fingers at his neck, like she could at all drag him closer. I've stayed; I've stayed; what about me? But it was trapped somewhere down her throat and the words that came out didn't seem to be her own. "I know how that feels."

"I hate that," he whispered.

"Yeah," she rasped.

"I hate that you know it at all. I hate that this is the thing we share."

"We share other things," she got out. Her fingers at his neck, her legs tangled in his, but he didn't seem to be able to feel her. "We share this: the bed, our bodies, this amazing connection that doesn't even fade with distance. Even when you're gone, when it's like I've imagined you-"

"I don't want to be a dream," he cried out. "I don't want to be nothing to you; you're not nothing to me, Kate-"

"I know," she husked, swallowing grief so hard she could barely hear him. "I know. I know."

He was clutching her so tightly that her wrist pulsed. 

"Worst day of my life, those five seconds," he whispered.

"What seconds?" she husked. Her arm was coming awake and so she shifted, felt the pain flicker and die again. A haze settled down over her, like the drugs had been blocked by a kinked hose and now flowed, flooding her.

"When I got that phone call. I thought you were dead."

"I'm not dead," she managed. "Just falling asleep."

"Oh," he sighed. "Sorry, sleep."

"Tell me the story," she got out, eyelids heavy. She didn't want to think about dying. She'd been so close to justice, so close to answers and they'd slipped away. She hadn't died, no, but it had been that close, and she'd suffered and endured and grieved too long to have it end before she got justice. She didn't want to die.

"What story, sweetheart?" His fingers stroked the nape of her neck, soothing circles.

"About the scar. I want to hear - hear it now."

"Why?" he murmured. "You know it's about her."

"I can keep it for you," she mumbled. "I'll keep it so when it fades..."

"You'll hold all my secrets?" he whispered.

"Mm."

"Kate, don't fall asleep yet."

She roused, eyelids flaring open, closed again. "Not asleep. Tell - me. Leave a mark in me instead."

That hadn't come out right. She didn't know what she was saying. Maybe she was already dreaming.

"A woman I thought I loved tried to slit my throat," he husked. His lips were brushing hers. "But I had no idea what love was until now."

\-----

He wasn't sure if she was asleep. She kept pressing her fingers into the scar at his neck when he stopped though, so he kept going. She hadn’t wanted to hear it before, after Foley; it had been enough that it had been over.

"She was ordinary, I guess," he murmured to the top of her head. "No one special. I was doing my job and I fell into it like you'd fall into a lake. Lean out long enough and your own reflection in her surface will drag you down."

"Mm," she hummed. Her knee shifted; she was mostly there. "Poet."

"Me?"

"You." A whisper along his bare skin.

"Don't know about that."

"Her?"

"Not a poet," he chuckled.

She stirred and rubbed against his body where they met, something incredible and erotic about her sleepy but struggling to stay with him, pricking herself with the sensation of him. "Not that. What was she like?"

"Not a poet," he repeated. "Just a girl. Bad haircut. Smooth skin. Drank too much and so did her brother. Knew him better, and thought I knew her. But they both worked for Foley. The guy who - guy who came after you."

She shivered and shifted, but she didn't pull away. "Sorry."

"Not your fault, none of it. All mine."

She sighed and her palm went flat over the scar. "How'd she cut you? Why?"

"We were swimming in a lake. Bathing, I guess, really. It was steaming with cold, and the sky was baldly blue. I came up and heard or felt her behind me, but I thought it was playful.”

“I did that to you in the bath,” she murmured. She sounded suddenly awake. Her head lifted and she scooted up against him, breasts so tantalizing. He sucked in a breath to control himself and went still as she fingered the whole length of his scar. “I felt you - freak out a little. I’m sorry.”

“You - were playing,” he said. He didn’t want to stop her from those rare moments of joy. “I overreacted.”

“I won’t-”

“I liked it.” He trapped her hand at his scar. “Helps to tell someone the story. Someone who isn’t critiquing my technique.”

She tilted her cheek back to his chest. “She came up behind you in the water and you thought she was playing around.”

“Until it cut,” he husked. “It hurt.”

“Oh, love,” she whispered. Her fingers stroked under his grip, stroked over and over the scar. “I’m sure it hurt a lot.”

“It started right here,” he said. He curled his hand around hers and brought her fingers to the inside edge, where it was deepest, just before his left ear. “And I jerked back into her when I felt it, smashed my head into her nose. But the blade went all along here.”

He drew her fingers in towards his trachea and she shivered, hunkering into him.

“I don’t like that,” she whispered. “I don’t like her. Where is she now?”

“She’s dead,” he croaked. “I killed her.”

Kate was very still, and he didn’t move, both their hands clasped at the base of his throat, but his heart was pounding.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “So sorry, love. It should never - be like that.”

He took a breath, deep and shuddering, and suddenly she was shifting on top of him, rising up on her elbows in the darkness, her thighs spread over his hips. Her hair tumbled forward, her broken arm curled in along his sternum, protection and protected, and he could see the fantastic, gorgeous love in her eyes.

“It should never be like that,” she told him. Her good hand coasted up to caress his jaw, thumb brushing at the bristles on his chin. “We will never be like that.”

“Never,” he breathed.

She leaned in close and touched her mouth to his scar, her elbows pressing hard into him, her lips so gentle.

“You deserve more than this,” she murmured. He didn’t know if she meant the knife to his throat or her adoration of the scar, but it felt good.

“Kate,” he hummed.

She rocked her hips slowly against his abs, a little breathless moan at the scar she kissed. Castle gripped her knees and stroked up to her thighs, squeezing. Her hair was brushing against his chest and he slid a hand up to push it aside, see her face.

Kate tilted her head and licked his neck; he grunted and dug his other hand into her thigh. She was mewling on top of him, rubbing herself against him as she kissed his neck, her breasts against him.

“Kate,” he begged.

She pushed down, dragging her mouth to his collarbones and then to his sternum. His cock was pulsing with every lick of her tongue, and he gripped her upper arms as she dipped further down.

“Kate, love - you can’t-”

She palmed his cock and he grunted, head arching, a curse falling out his mouth.

“I can’t?”

“Hell,” he whispered. “I didn’t tell you that story to have you - have you go down on me.”

“This isn’t a pity fuck,” she said. Her tongue touched the head of his cock and he growled.

“Kate, not - not pity. Just-”

She twirled her tongue around his shaft and rose up. “You shouldn’t even think about her any more. You hear me?” Her fingers massaged his balls and he saw fucking stars.

“Hear - hear you.”

“What was her name?”

“Col-Colleen,” he grunted.

She squeezed him. “Wrong answer.” Her nails scored his thighs and her mouth breathed hotly over him, so damn close. “What was her name?”

“No, I - gone. Out of my head.”

“There you go, baby.” Her lips skated down his shaft and he groaned, had to reach down and grab her. He didn’t know what he wanted, her to stop or her to never stop, but she was so damn hot.

“Kate, don’t let me come in your mouth.”

“I do what I want.” She sank her mouth down on him and he cursed, hips thrusting, riding out his moan and hers both. She was sucking on him as she bobbed her head, tongue pushing at him, her teeth nipping his head as she released him.

“Whoa, fuck, fuck-”

“No one should hurt you,” she hummed. “No one should ever hurt you.”

He groaned as she sank down over him again, her mouth so hot and tight. He tangled a hand in the hair at the back of her neck, gripping, trying not to force her, but when he jerked, she moaned.

She moaned like she wanted it, like it was the hottest damn thing, having him a little uncontrolled in her mouth.

He rolled his hips into her next dip, and she growled around his cock. The feeling of her, the insane intensity of Kate Beckett made him tremble with heldback straining need, his body trying to bury itself inside her, any of part of her.

She sucked hard on him and sank down. Castle snapped his hips to meet her and his cock hit the back of her throat.

He felt her throat working to swallow him, working and contracting around him, and then she moaned, some fucking amazing sound that killed him, just absolutely gutted him out.

Her lips caressed, wet and heated, and her fingers came to dance over his sensitive thighs. He didn’t - want to come like this. He needed to be - fuck-

“Kate,” he growled. “Kate, fuck, Kate - up here. Get the fuck up here, Kate Beckett.”

He tugged her hair, gripped her upper arm, dragged her back up his body.

Her eyes were suspiciously amused, but her sex was fucking wet against his thigh. “Something wrong?” she teased.

“Yes,” he gritted out. Her eyes dimmed and he lifted up, capturing her mouth with his, sucking his own taste off her tongue. She moaned and he wrapped an arm around her lower back, adjusted her just right. “This - this - is how it should go.”

She sank down on his cock, her wet, delicious heat encompassing him. A shift of his hips and he was seated so deep inside her that he could barely catch his breath.

Castle lowered his head to her shoulder, hunched in low, touched his lips to her breast as he rocked his hips.

She moaned and it sounded so erotic, so desperate.

Her fingers gripped his ear. “Castle. Rick. Rick, I need you to fuck me.”

“Hell, yes,” he growled. He brought her back down with him and rolled her over, making her grunt with it. He was still sheathed inside her.

“Come on, baby,” she husked. “Move.”

Castle thrust deep and she gasped, arching hard under him, her breasts to his chest, and then she fell apart in an orgasm so amazing, he could only stare.

She’d gotten - she’d been so worked up - just from - just from her mouth on his cock?

Kate sank back into the mattress, her eyes fluttering open. “Wow,” she whispered.

Fuck, she stole the words right out of his mouth.

Castle pressed his body over hers and began to thrust, keeping close, keeping tight and barely moving, letting her build back up with his slow movements.

She started to mewl in his ear, her good arm around his neck, her body wet and open to him.

“Harder,” she whispered. “Please, Rick. Please.”

He thrust and she shuddered. He snapped his hips and she keened. He gave her a rhythm now, fiercer, stronger, and she moaned, rolling up into him, meeting him, her mouth dragging across his.

“One more,” he gasped. “One more, Kate. Because you lo-”

She shattered apart, gripping him everywhere, her teeth digging into his neck at the top of that scar, and it was the last thing he needed.

He orgasmed inside her, calling her name as it whited him out, everything spiraling away, a dark and infinite universe.

\-----


	11. Chapter 11

“Kate.”

She curled her arms in and startled when pain pierced the deep haze of sleep.

“Hey, baby, might wanna let go.”

She groaned.

“Yeah, there you are. You awake? Time to get dressed.”

Kate cracked an eye open and swallowed past the sock in her mouth, tried to orient. Castle stroked fingers through her hair and down her back, bare skin rippling under his touch. She croaked out his name and he laughed at her.

“Okay, so not quite awake. Come on, love. You’re gonna be pissed at me if IAB walks in on us.”

She growled at him and wriggled into his body, hiding her face in his armpit. She felt him chuckle again, his fingers came to the back of her head, tangled in her hair. 

“Ka-ate. Better get up before I start inventing new pet names.”

He smelled like sweat and Old Spice and - old sex. She loved that smell - Castle rode hard and put away wet. 

He was murmuring something about a baby dragon but she ignored him. He smelled like Castle - Castle was in bed with her, annoying her with that rumbling voice; it was her spy palming her ass and kneading the back of her thigh.

She grinned.

“Other flying things, perhaps. Duckling? Or little goose?”

“Then you’re a fucking gnat,” she growled, lifting her head to glare at him. “Irritating.”

He grinned. “Mm, I was wrong. Let’s go back to our original.”

“If you call me a baby dragon, I’ll twist your nipple.”

He gasped a little melodramatically and widened his eyes, still grinning like a damn loon. “No, I wouldn’t dare.” He turned into her and nosed her forehead, soft kiss so gentle her heart flipped. “Kitten.”

“Fuck, I hate you,” she whispered.

“Retract those claws, kitten. We gotta get you bathed and dressed.”

She opened her eyes and saw him hovering near, waiting to kiss her mouth. She tilted her chin to offer her lips and he came to claim it, chaste, drawing her body into his with the strength of his arm.

She moaned against his closed mouth and rubbed her inside thigh over his hip, felt her sex wet along his quad. Castle’s groan was quiet and dark and she thrilled at the way his fingers traveled over her ass.

He nudged his mouth down to her neck, tasting, nipping, sliding his fingers between her cheeks and stroking to her sex. She shivered and clutched the back of his neck, working her hips into his thigh, back against his hand, quickly flushed and needy and breathing hard.

“You’re purring for me,” he mouthed. “You sound gorgeous, about to fall apart on my hand.”

“I’ll purr for you any day if you touch me like this,” she husked.

“Deal,” he whispered. His fingers stroked, slick and slow around her clit, dragging down her folds, and she had to close her eyes at the intensity of the feeling.

“Rick, I...”

“No, you don’t. No need.” His voice plucked at her body even as his fingers drove her tighter and deeper into her own arousal. She whimpered, and he covered her mouth his, drank her noises down until she could barely breathe, everything narrowed to the feel of him between her legs.

“Rick,” she gasped.

“Let go, love. Let go for me. Let me see just how much you want me.”

She cried out as she came, trembling through every stroke, swallowed by the way he brought her out.

When it was done and the weak winter sunlight was spilling across her face, her sweat cooling between their bodies, she realized he was kissing her.

His mouth at her breasts, at her inside thighs, at her belly. The touch of his tongue to her raised knee - when had that happened? - the brush of his lips to her hip bone. His thick scruff at the heavy side of her breast, brushing the top of her shoulder, nuzzling in at her neck.

She sighed, lovely and at peace for the first time in weeks.

Castle poised above her, but she snaked her arm around his neck and pulled him into her mouth, her own kiss shared, the taste of them shared, tender, intense.

He framed her face with his palms and rubbed his thumbs under her eyes and back across her cheekbones.

“You’re beautiful to me, Kate.” His kiss came back, again. Again. “So beautiful. How did I get so lucky?”

She wrapped her arms around him and held him close, eyes falling shut but so very awake.

\-----

Castle grunted and narrowed his eyes at her. “Beckett.”

“Just let me fucking shower.”

“You’re about to fall flat on your face,” he growled. “Sit down on the toilet and wait.”

“I can take a damn shower.”

“You can take a seat.” He gripped her by the shoulders and pushed her down to the toilet, getting a kick in the shin for it. “Hurt yourself more than me, kitten.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He ignored her, flicking the water on only a little warmer, not wanting to let her overheat. She kicked the back of his leg now, making his knee dip, but he only cast her a baleful look over his shoulder and resumed adjusting the temperature.

“Don’t call me kitten.”

“Stop clawing at me, Beckett, and maybe I will.”

“I’m kicking you.”

“And don’t fucking purr when you’re about to come.”

“You’re an asshole. You can’t use that against me.”

“It’s not against you,” he muttered. He cranked up the faucet so he couldn’t hear her reply - and how the fuck did it happen like this every time? He wanted to fucking throttle her and maybe five minutes ago they’d been drowsy in love in her hospital bed.

Damn, her hospital bed.

He sighed and turned around, saw her shoulders hunched in, her soft cast cradled into her chest, lips twisted with feelings she didn’t want to have.

The fucking too, no doubt. Made her vulnerable. How she hated that.

He wanted to sink down and bury his face in her lap and feel her fingers in his hair but that wouldn’t be happening. Not with her. Not like this. So instead, Castle filled the shallow basin in the shower with hot water and he let her grumble at his back until he could turn off the faucet again.

He turned around and slipped his hands under her elbows, pulled her to her feet. She swayed and said something nasty under her breath, but he ignored that too, simply guided her to the shower.

“You’re not bathing me.”

“Nope. I’m not.”

She took a stuttering breath, and he knew he’d surprised her. But he got her up over the low sill and into the five or six inches of water; he could already hear it draining around the makeshift plug. He raised a hand and angled the shower head towards the wall, opened up the water again.

“I’ll leave you to it when you’ve got your arm up and out of the water,” he told her. He was being mean and he knew it, but he faced off against her, waiting for her to realize she couldn’t.

She grit her teeth and glanced to her arm, still curled in protectively at her chest. Her skin was in goose bumps despite the heat of the water.

“Waiting on you, Beckett.”

“Don’t be a bastard,” she choked out.

He sighed, closing his eyes, and then he opened them again and stepped into the shower stall with her. She didn’t look happy about that; she was pissed at him and maybe hurt and she deserved it but he shouldn’t have.

“Don’t be a bastard,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry.” Castle leaned in and pressed his lips to the tips of her fingers in the cast, carefully cradled her injured arm.

“You’re not sorry.”

He angled her towards the handicap accessible ledge, made her sit down. She tried to refuse him, tried to stay standing, but he forced her down. 

“Arm up,” he said. He took her by the elbow and positioned her arm on his shoulder, out of any possible spray. “Hurt?”

“Yes.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and she ignored him. With her arm on his shoulder, he figured maybe it was too steep an angle. “Okay, fine. How do you want to do this?”

“I want to take a fucking shower.”

“You can’t get this wet.”

“Probably not supposed to get a couple things wet, but that didn’t stop you.”

Yeah, he felt that one. “Fine.” Castle dipped his knees and grabbed her under the arms, dragged her to her feet. “You want a shower, you can shower.” He twisted her around and even though he wanted to fucking leave her there, he didn’t.

He didn’t. He angled the shower to hit her in the ass and stepped back. She had her jaw working tight and her eyes averted, but fuck, she looked like she was going to cry or fucking bite his head off. Could go either way.

He lifted his right arm to circle his fingers around her elbow lightly, keeping her arm rested on his shoulder. “Use your right to grab the soap. We’ll do it together.”

“Our teamwork isn’t so fucking hot right now.”

“Then we need some practice,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

She sighed and shifted carefully towards the soap he’d left on the edge of the shelf. Her fingers were shaking as she moved into the spray; she actually flinched when the water got her face.

He didn’t help. She needed to fucking learn some damn limits. 

Kate gripped the bottle of travel-sized soap and brought it against her chest, shuffled back towards him. Her eyes still wouldn’t find his, but he gripped her wrist and took her closer, pressed open the top of the bottle with his thumb while she still held it.

He could feel how she struggled to give him enough force back to make that move work.

“Damn it, Kate, just...” But he couldn’t. Couldn’t even tell her to sit the fuck down and let him wash her because she was meeting with IAB in forty minutes and she needed every ounce of control and self-confidence she could find.

And this was how she did it.

“Tilt it into my palm,” he said. 

She had the bottle in a death grip but she flipped it into his palm, stopped just before the whole thing spilled over. Castle palmed her breast with the soap and she grunted, tilting her head to one side to look at him.

“Shower can be nice too.”

She sighed and her shoulder came down, the bottle dropping from her fingers. 

“Damn-”

“Shh, don’t worry about it.”

He rubbed his hands together and framed her hips with suds, stroked up to her breasts again, catching her when she swayed.

“Mm,” she murmured, eyes lifting to look at him.

“Nice and easy,” he whispered, stepping in closer. He felt the press of her breasts against him and slid his hands around to her back, up to her shoulders, getting soap in her hair. Her skin was heated and electric despite how pissed off she’d been at him.

Or because of it.

“When your knees give out, Kate, let me know, sweetheart.”

“I’m fine. I can stand in the shower.”

“Mm-hm,” he agreed, not agreeing.

She tilted forward and her cheek came to her raised shoulder, her eyes on his face. He didn’t mind, he loved having her, though he wished she’d just stop feeling the need to prove herself.

At least for a few minutes.

Nah. Not Kate Beckett if she wasn’t proving herself. He’d just have to deal.

“Baby, you feel good.”

She shivered under his hands as he soaped her up, and he angled her a little more into the spray of the shower to make sure that he rinsed her off.

“I want to wash my hair,” she murmured.

“Please sit down for that,” he begged, closing his eyes. “Please, Kate.”

She sighed.

He could feel her arms drooping with her exhaustion and yet still she hesitated.

“Please, baby. I’m - I really can’t fight with you about this. Don’t make me.”

Kate’s head tilted forward and her forehead touched his collarbone. She didn’t say yes but she wasn’t saying no either.

He brought his hand up to her injured arm and caught her, stepped backwards towards the handicapped seat. He turned her around and she sank to her ass, didn’t say a word.

Looked like she wasn’t going to fight him. For now.

\-----

She was dressed.

That was something like a major accomplishment, as pathetic as it was. She was so damn worn out, standing in the shower alone had made her want to throw up from exhaustion. That would be a bad idea.

Castle had dressed her, mostly. She wanted to curl up and close her eyes, but his fingers were running through her tangled hair. She had only the clothes he'd bought for her and no toiletries at all, so he had run back down to the gift shop for toothpaste and deodorant. 

Her father would have gotten that stuff, if he'd been in the city. She hoped he was doing well but she was afraid to call and ask, afraid to jinx it with her hope, afraid.

Castle was straightening the blankets over her legs like a nervous mother. She wanted him to leave, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings any more. 

She was a bad patient.

"Castle?"

He stopped, fingers spreading on the blanket near her knee, like he knew he was being too much. His eyes didn't meet hers.

"Could you - go home and get me - stuff?" she got out. "I just - like my own..."

"Fuck," he whispered, eyes flying guiltily to hers. "I should have thought of that. Eastman can-"

"No, you." She frowned, closed her eyes to find the right words. "I need underwear and..."

"Oh." His throat cleared. "Oh, shit. Yeah."

She opened her eyes and he was nodding, that determined set to his jaw. She let out an easier breath. "Not that I don't trust Mark, but I... would rather you pick out-"

"I get it," he graveled. He offered her a weak smile. "I'd rather me too."

She could laugh, only a little bit but it broke the hesitation and humility of being a damn invalid who needed him to dress her and bathe her and lift her from the toilet when she couldn't stand on her own. He stepped in closer and leaned in to kiss her cheek.

"And you want to face IAB alone," he murmured.

She flinched but he was smiling gently at her. His hand raised to brush the backs of his fingers at her cheek bone, tuck the wild hair back behind her ear. She caught his hand and held him there.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"No, you're right, love. I shouldn't be here, hovering like a pissed-off secret agent."

She laughed back and ducked her lips to the cradle of his palm, released him. "A couple changes of clothes. My own shampoo. The soap doesn't work too well with my hair-"

"It looks fine, I promise," he said, leaning in to kiss her again. "Rubber band is mostly keeping it back."

"Mostly," she mourned.

His lips touched hers again. He was a sweet man. Sometimes the covert spy part completely baffled her. 

"All right. I'll stay until Eastman diverts the IAB agents and then it's probably best I lead my father on a merry chase."

She flinched. "Your father?" She struggled to sit up straighter, peering past him to the door. "That's why we switched rooms. God. Castle, you-"

"It's fine. It's totally fine, Kate-"

"You're protecting me from him."

"I'm - it's just not ideal-"

"I have been so good," she promised. "The last time - I didn't even kick him."

Castle gave a huffing laugh, a narrowing of his eyes, but holy shit, she was serious. His father could fuck them up; the man was not a fan of hers and he kept insinuating things that made her skin crawl. 

"Castle-"

"We've got it covered, me and Eastman. We got you covered, Kate."

"It's not me," she insisted. "Castle - you."

"Me?" 

"He's such a damn-" She stopped at the look on his face; she had no interest in making this some kind of fucking choice. There was no choice. It wasn't him or me. She had to figure out how to live with it - this twisted up version of Castle when his father entered into the picture.

"Kate, he won't touch you."

"It's not me I'm-" She bit it off, shook her head. "I don't protect you from my father," she tried to point out.

"You don't have to, babe. I can take it. I'm glad I'm there, to help you when it gets bad."

That hadn't been what she meant. "Castle, there shouldn't be a need for protecting. I'm a big girl; I can take it too, you know."

His shoulders went up. "It's not about - it's like you said. It's not really about you, Kate."

She flinched back, but his hand squeezed hers.

"It's me," he admitted. "I don't think I can handle it. Him being... two worlds colliding, you know? It's not right. Shouldn't be how this goes with us."

"I'm not in your spy world?" she murmured. That was a fucking lie he was telling himself. "You didn't come crawling to me when your mission went bad so that I had to burn resources to stitch you up? I don't routinely have that fucking asshole Deleware tailing me through the city? I didn't have to defend myself against your arch nemesis-"

"Okay," he shouted. His face flamed. "I get it." A little quieter now. "That's not how I meant it. Black is my - old world. You're my new."

She sighed. "Castle, I can't be your new world." His fingers went slack in hers but she held on. "There isn't any place for it. No time for it. You do your job and I do mine. You know that. So when those two jobs start meeting in dark alleys, there's no time out, no chance to pause. You can't insist that this isn't supposed to happen, like one has ended and another begun. They just exist. There's me and him both in this world and I have to deal with it. Don't hide me like a secret."

"But you are a secret," he whispered.

"Secrets we're ashamed of."

"No," he croaked. "Not like that. Like this."

Suddenly Castle was leaning into her and dusting his lips at her ear, a shockingly intimate thing even after all the shockingly intimate sex they’d had. His breath warmed her ear and his throat swallowed and she could hear it, hear him, and then his voice.

"This is the secret we are," he murmured. Her skin raced with rippling shivers and her heart beat too loud to hear anything else. He was still speaking, the words were the secret, but she didn't consciously hear them - only listened. She listened and she gripped his hand to hold on.

When it was over, he lifted up, his face broken open in a way no spy's should be.

She clung to his hand and pressed it against her chest, tried to catch her breath.

What had he done to her? What magic was this, speaking spells into her ear?

"I'll go," he husked. "Good luck with IAB."

And then he was gone like she'd conjured him out of thin air.

\-----


	12. Chapter 12

“Detective Beckett? I’m Lt. Gates, with Internal Affairs. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Gates was holding her hand out and Beckett leaned forward to clasp it. Kate could feel her pulse moving through her injured arm, but she was clear-headed so far.

“Lieutenant,” Beckett said, a short nod. “Can’t exactly say the same.”

“Of course not,” Gates smiled. She had a man-eating-shark way about her that made Beckett sit up straighter. The older woman gestured to her male partner. “This is Barnwood. We’re here about the shooting.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me sir.”

“Yes... sir.”

“Youngest cop to make detective,” Gates went on, eyebrow raising.

“Me?” Her arm was pulsing. “I don’t track of that sort of thing.”

“Everyone else is. You should too.” Gates crossed her arms over her chest. “Beat me by a couple months, Detective Beckett.”

“Oh.” She blinked up at Lt. Gates, wondered why this woman cared so damn much. There was a note of antagonism below the friendly concern, and was it just competition? She was too tired for this.

“Things like this - going off on your own, a case not assigned to you - that’s going to put a shadow on your career.”

“I don’t care about the politics,” Beckett grunted. I care about justice. What the fuck did she care about shadows on her career? She wanted a crack at her mother’s murder.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll care,” Gates scolded her. “Be smarter than this, Detective.”

“Yes, ma-sir. Yes, sir.”

“All right, enough of the rebuke. Let’s get this started.”

The little man at her side, Barnwood, gave a swift look of his eyes towards Beckett, then back to Gates as if uncertain. He flipped open his detective’s notebook.

“Walk us through it,” Barnwood said. He had a dour look, no smile, and a dullard’s set to his eyes.

Kate took in a slow breath and tried to focus. After Gates’s scolding, her concentration was scattered. Maybe that had been purposeful. 

Beckett curled her good hand around the casted arm and leaned back. She began to explain how it had happened - following Vulcan Simmons for a few weeks, searching for a way in, a pressure point, finally cornering him in one of the tenement buildings. 

“I came up on him, surprised him. He turned to draw down on me, but I disarmed him. I took the gun.” She knew her hands were no longer steady and her voice sounded wobbly but it didn’t matter; she’d been this way through the whole thing.

She licked her lips and tried to remember what next.

“And then?” Barnwood prompted.

Beckett shifted in the bed and swallowed. “Then Royce came in after me. Good thing. I was - not doing so well against Simmons. He had - the upper hand.”

The lies were ash in her mouth. But she couldn’t explain. She had Castle to think of, to protect. Hers. She’d dragged him into this whole thing, his world colliding with hers. 

“You went in unarmed.”

She nodded, winced when her head swam. She hadn’t seen a nurse yet this morning, which meant the drugs would be wearing off soon. Or had already. She was feeling a little sick; she probably looked it too, because Barnwood, so far, had been rather reluctant to press her.

Oh. Maybe that had been part of Castle’s plan. Really play up the gunshot wound; she’d only gotten a broken arm but bring the pain to the forefront and maybe they’d miss the details. 

“And then?”

Such a wide berth they were giving her. “And then Royce declared himself-”

“Mike Royce. He’s retired though, right?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. She... didn’t remember quite everything. “Old habits, I guess. He shouted NYPD; Simmons startled. I got flipped.” She tried to remember. It was difficult to keep track of which words she’d said and which hadn’t been told. “I was flipped and the gun came up to my head.”

“This was Simmons’s gun? Which you had pulled from him.”

“I had taken it when we’d fought.” No. She had pulled her own gun on him, held him with it, and then she’d tried to talk. Just talk. She’d wanted to put pressure on him, rattle him.

This hadn’t turned out at all like she’d intended.

“You had the gun, Royce came in and shouted NYPD, and Simmons got the drop on you.”

She squinted. “No, that... I must have flinched. I wasn’t expecting Royce to follow me. I thought I had it under control.”

“You thought you had it under control. Unarmed. Against a known drug runner. Vulcan Simmons has twice been brought up on murder charges and twice been exonerated.”

“I know,” she husked. She knew his record backwards and forwards. “I have my own suspicions about Simmons. He’s part of a case I’m working on.”

“Which case, Detective?”

“A cold case,” she murmured. She’d been thinking about this since Eastman had warned her. She absolutely had to do this right; she couldn’t afford another official reprimand in her file about her mother’s case. “In 2002, there was a series of arrests that resulted in closing down one of the arms of the Latin Kings. I had this idea that Vulcan Simmons had taken over their territory. There was some indication-”

A flash of pain shot through her arm to her shoulder, making her grunt. She’d lost her place.

“All right. I think we have enough,” Barnwood said. He was squat and giving Gates the eye even from down there.

Gates had her arms still folded over her chest; she looked far from done. Still, she nodded as well, and indicated the door. “We’ll talk to you in a week or so, see how you’re doing. Your union rep will contact you in the meantime.”

Kate cleared her throat. “And Royce?”

“No charges,” Gates said, clasping her hands before her. “Anyway, once he gave his interview, he cleared out. You know anything about that?”

“He did?” She frowned, chest tight. “I think - he had a job offer last I heard. I don’t - know.” Royce hadn’t said he was going to actually be leaving. 

“Looks like you could use some pain killer. Stay on top of it, you hear me?” Gates said. “Worse if you let the pain go, toughing it out.”

Beckett blinked, staring at Gates. “Yes - sir?”

“Goodbye, Detective. I’m keeping my eye on you.”

The two from IAB left with a soft click of the door and Beckett slumped back into the bed, eyes falling shut.

Fuck, her arm hurt.

And she had no idea what Gates might do.

\-----

"Do you know what's happened to Royce?" she asked him. 

First words out of her mouth when he'd opened the door. Not hi, not did you get my stuff?, not even IAB was a breeze. Just fucking Royce.

"What do you mean?" he asked carefully, moving inside the door with her bag.

"I mean. IAB was here and they said he cleared out."

Castle dropped the bag to the chair and tried to think.

"You're too quiet. And my arm fucking hurts. You know something. Don't be-"

"He's in LA by now," Castle answered, lifting his eyes to her. "He's working contract for a PI firm. I - I've been keeping tabs."

"He's in LA," she said. She looked numb. He hated how much she relied on Mike Royce. Her training officer who had rejected her attention - her love - and yet look at her. She'd been in love with him and all Castle had ever wanted was that. That look on her face to be about him.

"He's got a job there," he said. Good riddance. But he couldn't say that. And he honestly never wanted her to look like that over him, because if she did, it meant that he'd done something terrible to her. It meant he would have betrayed her, if she looked like that. 

"A job."

"Kate."

She shook her head, closed her eyes. Her body turned away from him, on her right side, her broken arm curled up against her chest. "The drugs wore off."

He stood uncertainly at the side of her bed. "Hurt?"

"A lot."

"I can - go ask - I'll..." His father was still lurking the corridors, he had no doubt. If he went to get her usual nurse, the surgeon, the attending, he was afraid he'd lead his father right back here. He should've asked the night nurse to leave instructions to double check on them; he hadn't thought it would wear off so quickly. "Kate?"

"I'll just sleep."

"Should I get someone?"

"I just... Castle, I can't - do this right now."

Do what? Hold a conversation? "At least tell me IAB cleared you."

"I'm cleared for now. Another interview in a week," she husked. Was she going to cry? 

"I'll find the nurse," he promised. He still didn't move. He could have sworn the night nurse had told him that the meds would last until ten this morning. It was only eight. Ten would have been enough time to get his father out of here. 

He couldn't see her face from here. He had a sudden sinking suspicion that she was lying to him. 

She wasn't in pain. At least not from her arm.

Castle swallowed roughly, pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He texted Eastman to disengage and send a nurse their way with the lidocaine, and then he bent down over the bag he'd brought from her place. He unzipped it, fingernail catching on the teeth in his haste. He stuck his ragged nail in his mouth and reached in with his other hand, grabbed the blanket he'd packed on top.

It was the wedding blanket he’d bought for her in a Marrakech souk, the thick quilt thing that she always kept at the foot of her bed with its silver and turquoise. And it smelled richly of her place. (Of course he’d never told her it was culturally a wedding blanket.)

Castle unfurled it and stepped into the bed, dragging the blanket over her body and smoothing it down her shoulder and hip. She had her eyes closed, feigning sleep, but Castle simply pulled the chair around to the other side so he could face her. He sat down, caught her uninjured hand in his, and he waited in silence.

He didn't need her to say anything at all; he honestly didn't want to hear it.

Mike Royce was gone, that was over. 

But Castle was here now.

\-----

She woke to a fight, her heart pounding and head filled with confusion. There were too many people in the room, someone was yelling, she couldn't distinguish words, the surgeon was red-faced in the doorway and had a fistful of a jacket, a kind of civilized scuffling, Eastman shoving someone back, Carrie blocking most of her view, Castle taking a hit-

"Castle," she shouted, lurching forward. It was instinct, stupid damn instinct, and she cried out when the bones of her arm shifted and reformed into pain.

The whole room went deathly silent and Beckett closed her eyes, body melting in over the cast. She just had to breathe. Just breathe through it.

"Kate." His body close, the scent of him; his hands at her shoulders, bearing her weight. "Kate, babe, I really need you to sit up."

She grunted; she really fucking needed that lidocaine.

"Kate, he's here. Black is-"

She jerked upright, out of his arms, a rod of steel in her spine that made her breath come fast. 

"That's my girl," he murmured, standing beside her now. Carrie had gone somewhere, Eastman was standing now at her other side; the two spies looked like sentinels.

Black was in the doorway. The surgeon - the one who'd pieced her bones back together - was straightening his lab coat, giving a third guy an evil eye. The third was imposing and tall and broad, but he wasn't Deleware.

Deleware wasn't here.

John Black she could fucking deal with. 

The other bodyguard was out in the hall, attempting to keep out a phalanx of medical personnel.

"She can wait," Black said, apparently addressing a conversation already begun.

"Eastman, get the nurse in here," Castle said. "Carrie, back by me."

"Oh, come now, Richard."

Kate was gonna topple over. But she couldn't. She really couldn't. She had to be upright for this.

Carrie had slipped almost effortlessly out from behind the tall asshole in the grey suit and now she came to their side, though she took Mark's position as the man moved to leave. Carrie carefully kept her hands before her. Empty. She knew enough then, didn't she?

"Eastman," Black snapped. "You don't take orders from Richard. Get your wife out of the room. You know better. There will be no pain shot until we have talked. Beckett."

Eastman cast a troubled look over his shoulder, halting in the doorway. His eyes roved to Carrie.

No. No, it was not a choice. "We can talk," she rasped. She cleared her throat and forced her spine not to bow. "Pain shot after. I understand."

Castle made a noise. "Kate-"

"Carrie, you should leave," Beckett said, gently as she could. "I think Mark could use an escort to safety."

"Safety," Black humphed. He was playing the role of fine older gentleman. He waved a hand and one of the agents melted away, just like that. "Go, please, Mrs. Eastman. Already this is more exposure than I would like."

The awareness in the room was too much. Black for Carrie, Carrie for what was going on here, Eastman for what could be lost. Beckett reached out her good hand and nudged on Carrie's hip, her throat tied.

No one else need be caught up in this game.

"The surgeon," Castle said. He looked like he was still going to make something out of this, so Beckett reached across her body and snagged him by the shirt. He glanced back at her.

"Please remind them that this is a police matter," she said clearly, her eyes communicating everything to him. She hoped. God, she hoped. They had to salvage this as best they could.

"A police matter," Castle repeated. His head lifted and he surveyed the room - the witnesses in the room. His father was already unhappy about what Beckett knew, what she'd gleaned over the years, how Castle relied on her. She did her best not to rope Castle into her messy business, especially with Black so adamant that he leave no trace, but this kind of thing seemed to happen a lot.

"A police investigation," Black said to the surgeon. "Internal Affairs. And as such, it must be kept strictly confidential."

"But I was told Internal Affairs sent a black lady and a fat guy. You're-"

"This is the second round of interviews. IA is all about checks and balances - that's its whole purpose and function," Black said easily. "Don't make this more difficult. We need a clear conversation without pain medication - as I have said."

She wondered how long this had been going on. How long Eastman had given Black the runaround for them. For her. At least Carrie was out of the room now. Carrie had never been a thorn in Black's side and Beckett didn't want to draw attention to Mark's wife.

After another few comments and glances, the medical personnel were ushered out of her room and the scene was clear.

Black gave a weary sigh and sank into Castle's visitor chair.

Castle stayed right at her side.

She might actually pass out before she could get through this.

\-----

It was not acceptable. 

Not acceptable to have the bed between him and his father so that Beckett herself was the closest thing to Black's grasp.

But if he moved around the bed to put his body between them, he'd play into Black's head games. Even though this itself was a head game - the delicious tension of will he/won't he in Black's eyes. Castle was so fucking over this.

"So what do you think you can accomplish here?" his father plunged in.

Fuck. Castle had not told Beckett any of this.

"Sir," he said, but nothing came after it. He had no explanation that wouldn't set her off.

"You always do this, Richard. You dive into it before you even look."

"Don't talk over my head like I'm not here," Beckett gritted out. "I understand your concerns. But I can assure you that his job comes first. For some reason, the number for his burner phone here in New York was in my father's call history, and so Castle got the call from my sergeant. It won't happen again."

"I'm her emergency contact," Castle said quickly. Didn't want to have to go through that all over again; he'd just fucking gained that ground with Black. "We've already discussed this."

"We've already-" Beckett gave him a sharp look. "Who are you discussing this with, Rick?"

"Between us. The call - let there never be another call again - but if it does, it will get routed through the CIA switchboard. I'll get an alert to call back."

Her mouth dropped open.

"As he said," Black said dryly. "We've already discussed this. Your father apparently can't be trusted. So-"

Castle had to sling his arm around her shoulder to hold her back, a pinch of his fingers at the sensitive place along her neck to clear her head. "No." He dipped his mouth to her ear for a fast reminder. "No kicking."

She sucked in a breath and stopped resisting him though her body was rigid. He released her slowly, kept his hand at the back of her neck. It would have the appearance of subjugation, though he and Beckett knew better. His father gave a little smirk and crossed one knee over the other.

"Let's get back to the subject, shall we?"

Damn, Castle had hoped he'd diverted the man's attention.

"Richard. You cannot go through with this assignment."

"I can. I will."

"What assignment? Castle, if you have to be somewhere-"

"This, Katherine, is his assignment. He gave it to himself, like a cute little vendetta, but we frown on self-assignment, these lone wolf missions. The Agency doesn't work that way. Everyone is part of a well-oiled machine."

"Wait. What? What lone wolf?"

Castle gritted his teeth. Black had to know that Beckett had no idea that Castle was going to be assigned here. He made a motion towards his father, jerked his head.

Black actually stopped. His eyes flickered over Beckett in an assessing way. "Well. What do you think of our Agent Castle going rogue?"

Fuck, his father was really pushing it.

"I don't know about the Agency," Beckett said into the silence. "But I’m hardly one to judge. I'm - doing something similar. Lone wolf is right."

Oh, fuck, if only she knew. Doing something similar.

"And since you asked my opinion - I do have some experience with this and I guess if he's still reporting to you - and since you're here, he must be, right? If Agent Castle colors within the lines, then why couldn't he pursue his own investigation?" Beckett offered. Her words were clear but not quite sharp; he knew she needed that damn lidocaine block.

"Ah," his father murmured. A smile that made Castle's guts churn. Black absolutely couldn't tell Beckett that the moment she showed up for work her first day back - Castle would be there.

"Sir-" he started.

"No, Richard. Your... hm, interesting, I have no word for whatever this is. Shall we call Detective Beckett a minor distraction? Or a major one?"

Castle froze. His father was asking him pointblank if Kate was going to be a problem. And if he said no, then Beckett would think he-

"Minor," Beckett spoke up. "If you're talking diversion. I can be quite a major distraction though, yes. Diversion from the main course? No. That will never happen."

His heart fell. Even though she'd saved his ass - and her own - with that cleverness.

Never a diversion.

She had it all wrong. She was a major fucking diversion from his set course. A distraction? That would never describe her. She was so much more than that.

"Richard?"

He swallowed. "Was there a point?"

"Ah. Only that your minor diversion-" A nod to Beckett with a glitter in his eye that scared the shit out of Castle. "-major distraction has made a valid point."

"I have?"

She had?

"Color within the lines, Richard. And we'll see how it goes."

"You know how this goes," Castle warned him. "It's your ass on the line - your reputation - if word gets out what you've done."

Black's face flared dark and terrible and his eyes trailed purposefully, directly to Kate Beckett in warning.

"No. Let her hear this," Castle rasped, feeling reckless. Stupid. But his heart was wounded. "Let her know that you are involved in this - this thing I'm doing. This next mission is for everything. And she's my back-up. My witness."

Black rose from the chair, his dark coat still wrapped around him so that he looked formidable. But Castle still had two inches on the man - and Beckett. He had Kate - whatever minor or major shit she wanted to call it - and he felt invincible with her.

"You report to me. Every single step of the way. Every conversation. Every case that crosses your damned desks."

And then John Black snatched his gloves from his deep wool pockets and slid the leather over his hands, eyes lingering on Beckett in a way Castle absolutely couldn't abide. He made a move but Black had turned for the door, ignoring him, having the last word as he always did.

But Castle had to let him. He had to. Black had been one word from ruining everything with Kate.

"Rick," she whispered when the door shut. "What did you do?"

\-----


	13. Chapter 13

“First of all,” she gritted her teeth. Had to close her eyes as her arm pulsed with every heartbeat. “First of all, Richard. Why the fuck did you change my emergency contact?”

“Had to be done.”

She growled and opened her eyes.

“Beckett, just let me get the damn nurse-”

“No,” she hissed. “This first. Before it makes me - why the fuck did you think you had the right?” Beckett clenched her fist, her good arm cradled around the broken one, trying not to throttle him.

Castle wouldn’t look at her, his hands on his hips.

“Rick,” she snapped. “You’re not my fucking emergency contact. You don’t get to go around behind my back and reorder my whole life just because it suits you.”

His nostrils flared and his eyes jerked to hers. “Well, who the fuck else do you have?”

Beckett froze.

“Tell me, Kate. Because I’ll put their name down instead of mine. In a heartbeat. You just give me the word.”

She stared at him.

“I’m the only one you got, Beckett. Who the fuck else is going to be here?”

“You ran him off,” she cracked.

His face blanched.

“Mike. Royce. What did you say to him?”

“Only the fucking truth.”

“Castle-”

“Kate, don’t you dare defend him.”

She wanted to cry; she wanted to strangle him. Outside of the tragedy of her own damn family, nothing had felt quite so bad in her whole entire life, and she didn’t know if it was more the agony in her arm as it pulsed or the agony in her chest at his words.

“He’s an asshole who lets you walk all over him. He’ll never tell you no, Kate, and that is not who you need covering your back. You need some fucking hard limits-”

“Don’t tell me what I need,” she yelled. “You don’t have any idea.”

“I know what you need,” he shouted, leaning in hard on the mattress. “You just got fucking shot. And don’t think I didn’t read IAB’s ballistics reports, Kate Beckett. That last shot was a centimeter from your face.”

“That is my job,” she stated. Her face felt numb. Her lips. She didn’t know if the words were getting out. “Do not ask me to stop-”

“I am not asking you to stop,” he snarled. “Fucking hell, look at me, Beckett. Look at me. Would I ever say that you shouldn’t be a cop? You’re a fucking genius cop, but if you’re going out there - have back-up who is worth a damn - for fuck’s sake, stop looking at me like that.”

She kicked him. 

She wasn’t proud of it, but he fucking deserved it and she couldn’t shove him off of her when he was leaning in like this and her arm was killing her and so she kicked him.

He didn’t even rock back; he was immobile. He lifted an eyebrow and she winced, the side of her foot beginning to throb.

Castle closed his hand around her ankle and suddenly she was aware of just how small her bones were under his thick grip.

“Kate,” he said.

“You’re a fucking bully,” she said, chewing hard on the inside of her cheek. “Shut the hell up. What was that? Look at me and then don’t look at me? You’re infuriating.”

“And you’re stubborn as fuck,” he said easily. “So if you’re going out there badass and hellbent and take-no-prisoners, Beckett, then I wanna be the one they call.”

“Why do you even-”

His eyes flashed and she closed her mouth, mute and furious and hurt. Her fucking arm hurt.

“You don’t get to drive Royce off,” she muttered. “You don’t get to dictate who I can and can’t see. You have no say in that.”

“Yeah, but you and I both know that he’s a spineless shit who won’t ever tell you what you ought to hear.”

She grit her teeth. “You know, Castle, I got a lot of 911 calls for domestic disputes. A lot. And one of the classic indicators for abuse-”

“Don’t you dare.”

“-is that the woman has no other friends, none, because her husband has driven them all away. He forbids-”

“Do I look like your fucking husband?”

She lifted her eyes to him. “And you don’t look like my emergency contact either, Richard. My father-”

“He’s in rehab.”

“And you’re in a fucking undisclosed location.”

His face shut down. So completely that her instincts lurched in fear. Premonition.

“Rick.”

He stood up straight; it wasn’t hurt on his face. She’d been trying to score a direct hit but that wasn’t what this was. He was shifting back, his face carefully blank. He was lying.

He was lying to her.

He had promised-

“No.” What was she even saying no to? “Wait. Rick. What the hell is going on?”

“You need another shot,” he gruffed.

“Rick.” Panic was sliding through her guts. He was heading for the end of the bed, heading away from her. “Richard Castle, don’t you dare walk out that door. You always leave. Don’t you dare-”

“I’m not leaving,” he husked. His head turned sharply back to her. “I’m not leaving.”

“Talk to me-”

“Let me get the nurse.”

“Castle, please don’t do this when I can’t even get up and follow you.”

He winced, just as she knew he would, and he slowly turned back. His shoulders were hunched, his face so wary. She’d seen that look on his face so many fucking times that she was sick of it - Castle hunted.

“Tell me.” Her arm was fucking throbbing.

“I’m not leaving,” he whispered. But he was backing up.

She growled and tried to think past the ache in her bones. “Rick. Just-”

“I’m not leaving, Kate. I can’t leave.”

She stared at him.

“I won’t be at an undisclosed location because my assignment - is - it’s in the city.”

This is his assignment...

“What.” Her nerve endings were alive with fire. “What...”

“Don’t,” he whispered.

“No. Stop. You - you’re not-”

“Don’t, please. Please, Kate.”

She sucked in a breath, realized she’d been holding it.

“Please,” he spoke, bleak.

He’d driven everyone else off until he was all she had.

“Kate?”

“I think... I’m gonna pass out.”

Blackness hit her like a wall.

\-----

The nurse who'd brought the lidocaine checked her out. Though she kept reassuring Castle that Beckett was fine, and coming around even now, his heart wouldn't seem to believe it.

The blood was heating his palms like it did right before the climax - of a mission or of making love. The same feeling before he jumped out of a plane or laid in wait in an ambush in the jungle. Same feeling when he took her or when she fell apart around him, because of him.

Same sensation. It was terrible and sick like this, the rush making him want to drop to his knees in all the bad ways, but the nurse let out a little clucking sound.

"There we are, Kate. Gave your boyfriend a scare."

"Boyfriend?" she croaked. Her eyes fluttered and closed; she didn't seem with it. "Not my... "

His heart stopped.

Her head rolled towards him, lips opened, tongue coming out. "Rick? What I call you?"

"What do you call me?" he husked, stepping up to the bed. His hand came to her uninjured one. 

"Call you love," she mumbled. 

"Call me that," he whispered, even as her eyes slid shut. He turned to the nurse. "Something's wrong with her. She would never say that out loud."

The nurse patted his arm. "She still has concussion symptoms and she's worn out with fighting the pain. It's the plate and screws - a day or so after surgery and they'll ache like that. I'll talk to her pain management team and we'll try to come up with something stronger than the lidocaine. That won't work long-term."

The nurse injected the nerve block then, her hands capable and steady. But Castle felt broken open, his ribs cracked and exposing his vulnerable heart. 

You're in an undisclosed location.

How many times over the last few years had she needed him - needed him and known without even trying that he wasn't reachable? He had never quite seen - had never wanted to be aware. He left and he'd carried that photo he'd taken of her in bed like a talisman, carried it against his skin at times, not wanting it to be discovered. Beautiful and serene and looking at him like the world, but that was one moment.

That had been only one moment in her life. Usually she was alone and doing it alone. Separated from his help or support or even just his presence to reassure her, to give her one damn person who would back her up. A fucking friendly face. Even if they fought like cats and dogs most of the time.

“She should be fine, but if she doesn’t come around, press the call button.”

Castle glanced up at the nurse, had to blink once just to come back to the here and now. The woman pitched the needle into the biohazard bin and withdrew the plastic gloves, chased them after, but she had her eyes on him.

Castle reached out and wrapped his hand around Kate’s arm, rubbed his thumb over the material where her sweatshirt was bunched up on top of the soft cast. “Thank you,” he said finally, lifting his head to the nurse. “When do the screws and plate come out?”

“In about three weeks,” the nurse told him softly. She nodded to the woman on the bed and gave him a little smile. “She’s going to be okay, you know? You don’t have to stick so close, you’ll worry yourself to death.”

Castle grunted, receiving the information even if he didn’t quite believe it. The nurse left the room and right that moment, Kate began to stir. Her eyes opened and blinked muzzily at him, and her tongue darted out and touched the back of her teeth.

“Hey,” he murmured. “Kate.”

“Not done,” she slurred. “But it’s heavy in here.”

“Heavy? Think it’s ‘cause they just gave you some drugs. And a lidocaine shot.”

“Still mad at you.”

“That’s fine. You can be mad at me.”

“Damn straight,” she smudged. “What... were we fighting about?”

Her eyelashes were thick and clumped together. He pressed his thumb to the middle of her forehead and nudged on her; she growled and did some movement that maybe meant she’d been trying to duck. But it didn’t work out for her.

“If you don’t remember, Kate, love, I’m not going to remind you.”

“Said you’re not leaving,” she mumbled. Her eyes opened again. “You’re not leaving.”

“Why, baby? You really want me to leave?”

Her eyes fell shut. “I don’t know what I want with you any more.”

“That’s okay, too,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her forehead where his thumb still rested. “I know what I want with you.”

“Gotta do our jobs.”

“Promise we will, Kate. That doesn’t change. Why would it?”

“Hmmm.” Her throat worked but her eyes didn’t open. He stroked his thumb over the arc of her eyebrow and to her temple. Her humming grew into that chest-burring purr that he loved and he combed his fingers back through her hair.

“Kate?”

“Crawl in,” she mumbled. “Cold in here.”

“Of course,” he said, already shifting to put a knee into the mattress. He swung his leg over her hip and got in behind her, curled his body around hers, fitting her back to his chest. She was already drifting away, but not enough to really be unconscious yet. He could feel her fumbling and he caught her casted arm, cradled it.

“Baby,” she sighed.

“You mad at me still?”

“Probably always.”

He chuckled into her neck, nudged his nose into that warm place where her hair made her skin warm and sweet-scented. “I’m okay with that.”

“You are?” she whispered. She sounded a little more with it, and her injured fingers unfurled into his palm. “You’re okay with that?”

“Of course,” he told her. His mouth touched her shoulder, the side of her neck, up to her ear. “Of course I am.”

“Not annoying?”

“Well, yeah, Beckett, it’s annoying.”

She sighed and curled in around his arm, and he in turn curled in around her. 

“It’s annoying, Kate, love, but that’s the best part of life.”  
“Annoying is the best... I don’t understand you. Must be better drugs.”

“Or the concussion,” he murmured. She laughed and he smiled to hear it. “Fighting with you, or you being mad at me, that’s - invigorating, Kate. Makes me alive. Fighting for you.”

“No one fights for me,” she whispered.

“I do. I fight for you, Kate Beckett. Always.” He felt like he should hold her tighter, felt like the words couldn’t possibly be enough. “I am fighting for you. Never gonna stop. Couldn’t stop.”

“Feel like that - my mom.”

“Fighting for her.”

“No one else will.” She shivered suddenly and shifted, like she wanted to turn, but he slid his knee between her thighs and kept her on her good side. He didn’t want her to hurt herself, doing more than she should just because the lidocaine made it seem possible.

“Stay right here, Kate.” He cupped her neck and kept her close. “Just rest.”

“Don’t want to sleep.”

“You don’t have to sleep,” he murmured. “We can keep talking if you want.”

“Keep fighting.”

“We could do that too,” he promised. “Fight all you like.”

“Don’t stay for me.”

“Yeah, that will do it. Fighting you on that one, baby.”

But she didn’t answer and he realized she really had fallen asleep.

\-----

Beckett was hot and cramped and angry in some restless stupid way.

She was awake but the pain had gone, dulled, like a knife too often used. She'd grown accustomed to it, maybe.

Why was that her first thought? Not, oh the drugs are working. But, I've grown used to it.

She was built for pain. To take it and keep going. She'd learned that about herself these last few years - Castle had taught her. Leaving hurt, being left hurt more, but she kept coming back to him.

No, that wasn't really true. She had tried kicking him out, and he was the one who kept showing up again. And it was too good when it was here, too good when it was that kind of 'what-was-lost-is-found' beautiful joy that she just hung on. She hung on.

Her mother's death too. Why her father couldn't stand to look at her, talk to her, hold a conversation sober. Because she couldn't let go. Because every time she caught him clear-headed, she had to go back through those last few weeks with him, looking for the clue she'd missed, hunting it down like a true homicide detective, doing the job that Raglan and McAllister hadn't done.

She was sweating and uncomfortable with him draped over her like this.

Beckett turned under his arm, had to untangle their legs just to move. Wow, he was fucking asleep. He never slept, though she had to admit that every time she'd opened her eyes, he'd been awake. Even last night through all that, he hadn't been asleep. And he always came off mission and took his shot like a good boy and then he'd crash at her place for hours, sleeping it off.

Catching up, she'd always called it.

He hadn't done that yet. Had he even taken that stupid regimen? The vitamins and the booster shot?

He was so still. He hadn't even twitched as she had turned over. Kate touched his neck to be sure, felt his pulse thumping slowly under two of her fingers. Slowly, so slowly. He had the mildest resting heart rate of any person she knew.

Not that she took people's pulses usually. Not that she knew many people.

Who else do you have?

"No one," she whispered. He didn't wake. She didn't feel like she needed anyone else. When had she ever needed someone? Mike Royce was good in a pinch - he'd come if she called, follow her lead without asking a lot of stupid questions. Castle asked questions.

Castle didn't want her to die.

He had looked very - very broken for a while there. She'd never seen him unable to bring it back together. Well, not outside the bedroom. If she blindfolded him and cuffed his hands to her headboard and teased mercilessly, then yeah, he got - scattered. 

Broken down to his base elements. 

She'd seen glimpses then of the man he was, pure and raw, the man without the charm or smooth-talking, the man without words, without moves, without skills. The man that craved.

Me.

He craved her. She had him.

But all this. All the extra, this outside the bedroom stuff; she didn't do that. Didn't do it well and thus she didn't do it. But she was beginning to see those same signs here, outside the bedroom - she was seeing that look in his eyes that meant he couldn't get it back together, he was at her mercy, he wanted only her.

And they weren't having sex. That was - a big deal. That was more than she could handle right now. Ever. She had begun to realize that it wasn't just her father who had gotten - twisted up. 

She was twisted up too. And there wasn't a fix like AA to help her. There was only justice.

When she was alone, it was easy to see the end goal. When Castle was in her bed, it was so hard to see anything at all. Other than him.

What the hell was she going to do with him for the next eight weeks? Eight weeks lost. Eight weeks of backsliding. Eight weeks of immobility on the only case that mattered.

And yet.

Here she stayed, watching him sleep, everything in her wanting only to be closer, get closer, no matter how cramped and sweaty and uncomfortable, no matter how he always, eventually, would leave, no matter the derailment of her whole life, because here he was.

Because here he was and she was built to take it.

\-----

end


End file.
